Andean wax palm

The Essence

"Ceroxylon alpinum is the type species of Ceroxylon, the Andean wax palms - the genus that also contains C. quindiuense, the tallest palm and thus the tallest monocotyledon, at 61 m. It is a solitary, dioecious palm of premontane wet forest between 1400 and 2000 m in the Colombian and Venezuelan Andes, with a trunk 8-21 m tall whose internodes are coated in thin layers of wax, white at the base and grey to brown toward the crown; the leaves are powdery-white beneath from a covering of white scales. Growth is extraordinarily slow. A demographic study of remnant populations at Salento, Quindio (Vergara-Chaparro 2002, cited by Palmweb) found that plants develop an aerial stem only at roughly 57 years of age, begin flowering at about 83, and reach a maximum age of about 160 years, with one individual estimated at 213. That longevity sits uneasily with the state of the habitat: the vast majority of montane forest within its range has been destroyed or fragmented by coffee plantations and pastures, natural populations in Colombia are estimated to have been reduced by more than 80% over the last 210 years, and genetic erosion has been detected among seedlings in one of the best-conserved populations. The IUCN Red List lists it as Endangered (B1+2c, criteria version 2.3), but on an assessment dated 1 January 1998 and annotated "Needs updating"; national assessments in Venezuela (Llamosas et al. 2003) and Colombia (Galeano & Bernal 2005) reach the same category under the 2001 version 3.1 criteria, and the 2021 National Red List of Colombia gives EN A2ace. One point of confusion is worth flagging: sources that add Ecuador to the range are following the old subsp. ecuadorense, which Sanin & Galeano (2011) included in C. echinulatum, a decision they report as supported by molecular phylogenetic analyses, so current treatments restrict C. alpinum to Colombia and Venezuela. In cultivation the species is very rare and very slow growing, and succeeds only where summers stay cool."

Wax from the stems has been used to make candles and matches, and Kew's ColPlantA records uses as animal food, food, materials, medicine and social. Young leaves were traditionally cut for Palm Sunday religious processions, a practice now abandoned by law in Colombia; stems are used for fencing around houses and farms and to build walls, and the fruits are eaten by pigs. Palmpedia carries photographs of mature fruiting specimens in the town square of Salento, Quindio.