Slender Joey Palm

The Essence

"Johannesteijsmannia lanceolata, the Slender Joey Palm, is regarded as the rarest of the four Johannesteijsmannia species — a genus of magnificent rainforest fan palms, all four of which occur in Peninsular Malaysia. It is a solitary, stemless understorey palm endemic to Peninsular Malaysia, best known from a very small area of the Sungai Lalang watershed in Selangor, with Malaysian records extending to Pahang and Negeri Sembilan. Its erect, pleated, lance-shaped leaves are the narrowest in the genus: up to 3.5 m tall, with an undivided blade to 2.4 m long but only about 30 cm wide, glossy above and brown-scurfy beneath. Flowering to ripe fruit takes about 14–15 months, and the species produces few seeds compared with its relatives, so seed is scarce. Malaysia assesses it as Endangered under IUCN Red List criteria (ver. 3.1): it is an endemic with a very restricted extent of occurrence, and the largest subpopulation holds fewer than 250 mature individuals — though the species has not yet been evaluated for the global IUCN Red List. Export of the genus from Malaysia is banned under the Customs (Prohibition of Export) Order 1998, and collecting wild plants or seed requires a permit and is discouraged. Local indigenous communities, who know the palm as chica, use the tough leaves for roof thatch — a practice now rare and reserved mainly for kenduri celebration feasts — and the species is also traded locally as an ornamental. It remains rare in cultivation, found in only a few botanic gardens and private collections, among them the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden in Thailand."

John Dransfield described the species in 1972 in his revision of the genus, published in the Gardens' Bulletin Singapore (26: 78). The original 1972 account records it in the Sungei Lalang Virgin Jungle Reserve in Selangor, growing with J. magnifica on the steep banks of a forest river. Its endangered status has since made it a subject of conservation-genetics research: Ang and colleagues published 31 microsatellite markers for the species in the American Journal of Botany in 2011, developed to study its genetic diversity and mating system.