Ecuadorian wax palm

The Essence

"Ceroxylon ventricosum is a massive, wax-coated Andean palm of southwestern Colombia and Ecuador, described by Max Burret in 1929. It grows in moist montane forest and in pastures, mostly between 2,000 and 3,000 m and usually above 2,500 m, often forming stands of hundreds of individuals — remarkable for a tree of this size. Palmpedia reports it as Ecuador's highest-altitude naturally occurring palm, recorded well above 3,500 m in paramo forest and descending to about 1,800 m, especially in Loja. The species is dioecious, so both male and female plants are needed for fruit. Its ethnobotany is unusually well documented. Split stems serve for fencing and house construction; wax is scraped from the trunk — harmlessly, according to Useful Tropical Plants — and burned for illumination or processed into candles and soap; pinnae from the spear leaf are woven into hats and mats, and the spear leaf itself is sold during Holy Week for Palm Sunday. Pigs are turned loose in the palm stands during the fruiting season to eat the fruit, and because of this the palms are protected in pastures and forest — a rare case of a subsistence use conserving the tree. Palmpedia adds that the stands are the preferred habitat of two endemic parrots, the El Oro Parakeet and the Loja Green Parrot, both said to be declining rapidly along with the palms. National assessments reproduced in the Sanín & Galeano 2011 revision rate the species Vulnerable in Ecuador and Endangered in Colombia, citing habitat reduction and the small size of the populations; there is no global IUCN Red List assessment. Useful Tropical Plants notes it is harvested from the wild for wax and wood. In cultivation it is rare and demanding: rarepalmseeds calls it "One of the biggest and probably the most impressive of the Ceroxylon", while Geoff Stein describes it as awe-inspiring when well grown but a very fastidious palm that dislikes heat and arid climates. Growth-rate reports conflict, ranging from slow — Palmpedia notes it can get quite tall given a century or so — to moderate or even fast."

Described by Max Burret in Notizblatt des Botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin-Dahlem 10: 847 (1929). The name is accepted by POWO and by the GBIF backbone taxonomy, and Palmpedia and Wikipedia both list no synonyms for it. The modern detailed description, distribution and use records come from the monographic revision of the genus by Sanín & Galeano, published in Phytotaxa 34 (2011) and reproduced on Palmweb and Palmpedia.