Marquesas palm

The Essence

"Pelagodoxa henryana is a rare Marquesan palm and one of two species currently recognised in the genus Pelagodoxa, which molecular analyses place as sister to the New Guinean genus Sommieria in the tribe Pelagodoxeae. It survives on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, where NTBG counts about 12 mature individuals in a single valley population at roughly 135 m elevation; a second Marquesan population was found in the Hatihe'u valley in 2012, while trees recorded in the 1920s at Unurau and Temahara on Raivavae in the Tubuai Islands had gone by the 1980s. Whether the palm is genuinely wild anywhere is doubtful: both Marquesan stands were found near old house sites and the Raivavae trees stood at marae ritual sites, which led Hodel and co-authors to suggest the populations may have been established by people. The species now relies heavily on cultivation to survive. Growers value it for its enormous leaves, undivided apart from a bifid tip until wind tears them, and strongly discolorous with a whitish to silvery bloom beneath, and for its nearly spherical fruit wrapped in a corky skin that splits into pyramidal warts. The young endosperm is edible, and the ripe mesocarp has a sweet pungent odour that some find offensive, likened to a combination of mild durian and custard apple. Seed is seldom available from cultivated plants, which has long made it an expensive item reserved for collectors."

Beccari announced the palm as a grande nouveaute, and PALMweb still describes it as one of the greatest novelties in the palm family, both morphologically and historically. Pelagodoxa mesocarpa Burret (1928) was long treated as a synonym of P. henryana, but following Hodel's 2019 reassessment both POWO and GBIF accept it again as a distinct species native to Vanuatu. Beyond the Marquesas, P. henryana is believed to have been introduced into the Solomon Islands by early French missionaries, and it is grown in gardens on the Marquesas, Society and Gambier islands and in Singapore, Hawaii and Australia.