Big-leaf palm

The Essence

"Marojejya darianii is a solitary, monoecious swamp palm endemic to northeastern Madagascar, one of only two species in a genus confined to that island. Its trunk reaches 8-15 m tall and 15-35 cm thick, hidden at first by old leaf bases and later bare, pale grey-brown and covered in warty lumps, with short spine-like adventitious roots on the short internodes. The crown holds 20-30 stiffly erect, undivided leaves that rise straight from a bright green sheath with two large rounded auricles, with no petiole at all; PACSOA compares the effect to a shuttlecock. Sources disagree on leaf size: secondary accounts such as Wikipedia credit the species with the largest simple leaves of any known tree, up to 9.1 m long and 1.2 m wide, while the 1995 monograph account gives blades of 3.5-5 m long by 1-1.2 m wide. The original 1984 description was itself drawn up only from fragments and photographs. Known from about 80 mature individuals at five sites between 200 and 600 m elevation, the species is assessed as Endangered (criteria B2ab(iii); D) by the IUCN and listed on CITES Appendix II. Agriculture, logging and the gathering of plants are the recorded threats, and it is used internationally in the horticultural trade; it has been among the most sought-after Malagasy palms since its discovery in 1983, with large quantities of seed exported from the type locality and juvenile plants reported in private collections in Queensland. Dransfield and Beentje called it "undoubtedly a difficult palm to grow for most of us", though a PACSOA contributor considers that reputation undeserved where its conditions are adequately met, reporting that plants are slow to establish and then grow strongly, each new leaf up to 15 cm longer than the last. No traditional or economic use is recorded for it."

Reports of a huge entire-leaved palm in the hills near Maroantsetra began circulating in the early 1980s. Mardy Darian, helped by Jean Gerard and Dominique Halleux, tracked it down in 1983, and John Dransfield and Natalie Uhl described it the following year in Principes under the title "A Magnificent New Palm from Madagascar", working only from the material Darian sent; the authors later noted that those fragments gave no sense of the plant's size and beauty as it grows in the wild. For years it was known from that single unprotected site, and the 1995 monograph rated it Critical. Five localities are now recorded, and the current IUCN assessment - dated 17 December 2010 and published in 2012 - places it at Endangered, a change from Critically Endangered that some secondary text still has not caught up with.