Menamoso

The Essence

"Marojejya insignis is a massive, litter-trapping palm endemic to the eastern rainforests of Madagascar. Henri Humbert described it in 1955 from material collected in 1949 on the Marojejy massif, the mountain that gives the genus its name, and it then remained very poorly known until Harold Moore recollected it in 1971. Dransfield and Beentje called it "one of the grandest palms of Madagascar". A trunk of 2-8 m carries 15 to 20 upright leaves in a shuttlecock crown, and those leaves are famously variable: the blade may be undivided in its proximal quarter and pinnate beyond, or regularly pinnate throughout, with the petiole and the ear-like sheath auricles present or absent. The variation is so wide that the two botanists at first took the collections for at least two separate taxa, before concluding from ample material that it is all one species. The sheaths and the proximal part of the blade accumulate fallen litter and water, with aerial roots penetrating the trapped debris. Fruits are bright to dark plum-red to purplish, turning black. The genus Marojejya holds only two species, both endemic to Madagascar's rainforests; the other is M. darianii. Local people eat the palm-heart and fell trees to obtain it, and the IUCN assessors note that occasional monitoring, especially of harvest trends, is required. A cultivated individual grows in the Parc de Tsimbazaza in Antananarivo, opposite the Herbarium building."

Humbert published the species in 1955 (Mem. Inst. Sci. Madagascar, Ser. B, Biol. Veg. 6: 94), based on material found in 1949 on the Marojejy massif; the type is Humbert 23632, collected in fruit on the East peak slopes in March 1949. It remained very poorly known until Harold Moore recollected it in 1971. The many collections made afterwards, from Marojejy in the north to Andohahela in the south, differed so much in the presence or absence of a petiole and of auricles and in the dissection of the leaf, even within populations, that Dransfield and Beentje initially suspected more than one taxon.