Carpoxylon palm

The Essence

"Carpoxylon macrospermum is a solitary, emergent rainforest palm and the only species in its genus, endemic to the southernmost islands of the Vanuatu archipelago — Tanna, Futuna and Anatom (Aneityum). Natural stands are extremely rare; most known plants grow near dwellings and smallholdings, and cultivated, semi-naturalised individuals have been recorded on Espiritu Santo, Malekula, Paama and Efate. It is a very tall palm, cited at over 25 m, with a thickened bottle-shaped trunk base, a long columnar green crownshaft and strongly arching pinnate leaves, and it carries unusually large fruit about 7 cm long containing a single big seed enclosed in a thick woody endocarp. The IUCN assessed it as Critically Endangered under criterion D in 1998, an assessment still flagged as needing updating; the Merwin Conservancy cites approximately 40 trees left in the wild, while the Monaco Nature Encyclopedia gives a count of 32 adult individuals. The recorded threats are deforestation for agriculture and possible loss of the seed dispersal agents. In Vanuatu the stem is used as building material, the leaflets for roofing in the same way as coconut, the roots in the preparation of remedies, and the immature green fruit are eaten. The cultivated village palms are regarded as informal ex situ conservation collections that likely hold significant reserves of genetic diversity."

Known only from that 1875 publication — which included illustrations of the fruit and seed but gave the locality simply as 'New Hebrides' — the palm long remained an enigma for palm botanists: even the original specimens were lost, and its evolutionary affinities and place in the palm family were unknown. John Dowe serendipitously rediscovered the species in 1987 on Espiritu Santo, outside the natural range, and the original specimen was subsequently found misfiled in the Natural History Museum, London, as a Veitchia. No species-specific protected areas exist, but like all native Arecaceae it is protected by law in Vanuatu and the Vanuatu Environment Unit has classed it high priority; a Fondation Franklinia project (2020–2023), granted to the New York Botanical Garden, ran a pilot in-situ programme at three sites that together comprise 60% of the known wild individuals.