Red lemur palm

The Essence

"Lemurophoenix halleuxii is an immense pinnate palm endemic to northeast Madagascar, restricted to the Bay of Antongil area - the Masoala Peninsula, Mananara Avaratra and the Rantabe region - where it survives as three fragmented subpopulations of about 300 mature individuals in total. It was found only in the 1980s and described as an entirely new genus by John Dransfield in Kew Bulletin in 1991; Beentje and Dransfield later called it "probably the grandest palm of the whole island". A trunk to 20 m carries a greyish-pink crownshaft, leaves to 4.5 m with a crimson young rachis, and vast branched inflorescences whose bracts are bright crimson outside. The chestnut-brown fruit, about 50 mm across with skin cracked into low corky warts, is a type unique in Madagascar to this genus. Beneath mature trees the ground is carpeted with fallen endocarps while seedlings are very scarce, and Dransfield remarked that it is hard to imagine which extant Malagasy animal could disperse so large a diaspore. The IUCN assesses the species as Endangered, threatened by clearance for shifting agriculture and logging, and by trees being felled so that seed can be harvested for the international horticultural trade."

Described in 1991 from a discovery made in the 1980s, the palm puzzled its author: Dransfield could not place it in any existing subtribe of Areceae and deferred subtribal placement, suggesting a new monotypic subtribe might be needed. Genera Palmarum (2008), reproduced on Palmweb, later noted that the phylogeny with the greatest sampling of Dypsis places Lemurophoenix as sister to the rest of the Dypsidinae. Dransfield judged its horticultural potential very great indeed, comparing its stature to the Caribbean royal palm Roystonea oleracea but with the added pink-tinged grey crownshaft, and warned at the same time that annual export of large quantities of seed from the only known population would ultimately affect regeneration and endanger its survival. The genus is widely described as monotypic, and Genera Palmarum observed that seeds exported by merchants in the late 1990s hinted at a second species with smaller fruit lacking corky warts; POWO now accepts that second species, Lemurophoenix laevis, published in Palms 62: 70 (2018). Sources also disagree about the wild population: the IUCN/SSC Palm Specialist Group flagship page heads the species as Critically Endangered and mentions past felling of trees for edible palm hearts, and PACSOA reports a decline from about 30 mature individuals at discovery to somewhere in the low teens, mainly through cutting for firewood - neither figure matches the official 2012 Red List category or estimate. A 2012 Conservation Genetics study by Shapcott, Quinn, Rakotoarinivo and Dransfield surveyed all known populations of this palm and of Voanioala gerardii, found contrasting levels and patterns of genetic diversity between them, and called for changed seed-collection methods and the involvement of local villagers and land managers to prevent their extinction.