Australian fan palm

The Essence

"Licuala ramsayi is Australia's only native species of Licuala, endemic to northern and north-eastern Queensland and mostly found within about 20 km of the coast. It grows in rainforest, swamp forest, mangroves, littoral forest and diverse riparian and riverine habitats, and where conditions favour it the palm can dominate small areas to form a "fan palm forest". The Wet Tropics Management Authority states that the fan palm forests around Mission Beach make up about one half of the total fan palm forest in all of Australia; the short Licuala Rainforest Circuit in Djiru National Park walks visitors through them. Its ecology is tied to the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii), which eats the orange to red fruit and disperses the seed in its droppings. Bush Heritage Australia calls the birds essential to the longevity of fan palm populations, and notes that the palms flower from November to January and fruit from January to March, through the wet season, when few other cassowary food plants are fruiting. Two varieties are accepted, var. ramsayi and var. tuckeri Barfod & Dowe. The species is little studied. The main published demographic work is Gorman's 1996 survey of the stand in Tam O'Shanter State Forest at Mission Beach, which assessed density at about 3,125 individuals per hectare and the average height of mature individuals at 10.9 m, detected generally low seedling recruitment, and concluded that the population's departure from a classic reverse-J age curve may reflect cyclone-dependent or otherwise altered recruitment rather than decline."

Wikipedia records that the trees provided an edible cabbage to Aboriginal people, as well as thatch, food wrapping and cigarette papers made from young leaves; the Useful Tropical Plants database likewise notes that the apical bud was eaten, a practice it discourages because harvesting it kills the tree, and that a fibre can be obtained from the leaves. Bush Heritage Australia and Rainforest Rescue confirm the leaves were used for thatching, shelter from rain and wrapping food. Palmpedia notes that in the Tully area of North Queensland the palm is known by the Aboriginal name Chakoro. Bush Heritage Australia lists the main threats as large-scale clearing of coastal rainforest for agriculture and housing, wetland drainage, edge effects in fragmented remnants, feral pigs ploughing up the ground and damaging seedlings, and weed invasion including Pond Apple (Annona glabra) and Harungana (Harungana madagascariensis); it manages the 8.2-hectare Fan Palm Reserve, bought in 1993, about 50 km north of Port Douglas. Conservation listings differ by scale: the species is Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and also Least Concern under Queensland's Nature Conservation Act 1992, but Rainforest Rescue notes that Regional Ecosystem 7.3.4, mesophyll vine forest with Licuala ramsayi, is listed as "Of Concern" under Queensland's Vegetation Management Act 1999.