Millionaire's salad palm

The Essence

"Deckenia nobilis is the sole species in its genus and one of the palms found nowhere on Earth but the Seychelles, where it grows on the inner granitic islands of Mahé, Praslin, Silhouette, La Digue, Félicité and Curieuse. It is a tall, solitary, monoecious palm of real presence: sources give heights of 30 to 40 m on a slender, pale grey, ringed trunk about 30 cm across, and while young plants bristle with stout thorns 7-8 cm long, adult trunks lose their armour and the leaf bases instead wear a white felt-like tomentum. Its fame, and its misfortune, is culinary. The growing tip is eaten as 'millionaire's salad', a delicacy whose harvest kills the palm outright, and unregulated, often illegal cutting of palm hearts sent the species into decline; the IUCN Red List assesses it as Vulnerable. The palm is now legally protected in the Seychelles, many surviving stands cling to rocky crags and outcrops too difficult for harvesters to reach, and local nurseries raise seedlings for planting out. Where it is left alone it remains a palm of exposed hillsides, sometimes growing in gregarious stands on knolls and ridges whose deep leaf litter suppresses the undergrowth beneath."

Described in 1870, the palm has long been valued locally: PALMweb records the edible palm heart and leaf sheaths used to make containers, and the palm-heart dish is the 'millionaire's salad' that gives the species its best-known English name. BOTANY.cz notes it was once more widespread and its range has contracted; Wikipedia records that Seychelles nurseries now raise seedlings and distribute them for planting, alongside legal protection of wild trees.