Hardy parlor palm

The Essence

"Chamaedorea radicalis is a small understory palm of northeastern Mexico and the northernmost-occurring member of its genus. It is also the most cold-hardy: Hodel records it withstanding -5 to -7 °C without displaying any leaf damage, and that hardiness, combined with an unusual tolerance of both deep shade and near-full sun, explains why it is grown well outside the tropics. Plants are solitary and often appear stemless, with erect pinnate leaves and long-stalked inflorescences that seem to rise straight out of the ground; older plants may develop a green, ringed stem 3-4 m tall. The species is dioecious and wind-pollinated, and female plants carry fruit that ripens through yellow and orange to red. Economically it matters far more than its obscurity suggests. Its cut leaves are a non-timber forest product traded into the international floral-greenery market, and their harvest is an important source of income for communities inside the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Tamaulipas. That harvest has been studied unusually closely: Endress and colleagues (2004) recorded twelve harvesters in Alta Cima selling an average of 48,053 leaves a month, and found that after two years of treatment the replacement leaves were so much shorter that overall foliar yield fell by 48%, 54% and 68% where all marketable leaves were removed once, twice and four times a year respectively, concluding that leaf harvesting is not a stable source of income. Later work by Berry and colleagues modelled the population as a source-sink system, in which palms on rock outcrops, out of reach of browsing free-range livestock, supply enough seed to sustain the more heavily browsed forest-floor population. No IUCN Red List assessment for the species could be found; the Flora del Bajío calls it uncommon and vulnerable to extinction within its study area, and over-harvesting of the fronds is the threat the literature consistently identifies."

Martius published the species in Historia Naturalis Palmarum 3: 308 in 1849, from material collected by Wilhelm Karwinski on the Atlantic slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental between 21 and 22 degrees north; the type is Karwinski s.n. at Munich. Watson described the same palm again as Chamaedorea pringlei in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts 26: 157 (1891), from Pringle's collections, and it was grown under that name at Kew Gardens as early as 1900 before being reduced to synonymy. Nunnezharia radicalis (Mart.) Kuntze is a further synonym.