Dominican cherry palm

The Essence

"Pseudophoenix ekmanii is one of the rarest members of Pseudophoenix, a Caribbean genus of four species, and is endemic to the southwesternmost Dominican Republic. The IUCN records it as mostly restricted to three general areas in Jaragua National Park: Sabana del Algodón and Trudillé on the mainland, and Beata Island offshore. It is a solitary, pinnate-leaved palm of roughly 4-6 m — Zona's revision gives the stem as 5-6 m — with a strongly ventricose, bottle-shaped trunk. Young stems carry waxy white internodes interrupted by dark leaf scars, which Rare Palm Seeds describes as giving the trunk a zebra-striped appearance; the crown holds about twelve stiff, gray-green, densely glaucous leaves. Unusually for the genus, there is no obvious petiole between the sheathing leaf base and the leafy rachis, a character Zona says distinguishes it from any other Pseudophoenix at any stage, and its fruits are smaller than those of the similarly bottle-trunked P. vinifera. Its conservation story turns on a drink. The crown meristem is cut to tap sweet sap for "Mabí de Cacheo". The IUCN describes this as a non-alcoholic beverage and notes that the tapping procedure removes a large portion of the crown meristem and often results in the death of the plant; Zona's 2002 revision and Useful Tropical Plants instead describe the sap as fermented into palm wine. Adult palms are also illegally removed from the wild for garden planting, and trunks used as nest sites by the Hispaniolan Parrot (Amazona ventralis) are destroyed to take chicks and eggs for the illegal bird trade. The species was assessed Critically Endangered (A3d) on 9 October 2024, published in 2025, with 1,236-1,436 mature individuals, decreasing and severely fragmented across six locations, an extent of occurrence of 356 km2 and an area of occupancy of 68 km2, and a projected 80% reduction over the next 100 years — a long horizon because the palm is so slow growing that its generation length is put at 200 years. Namoff et al. (2011) genotyped 104 individuals and found genetic drift, inbreeding, an isolation-by-distance pattern and a north-south geographic split, with the lowest diversity on Isla Beata. Griffith et al. (2021) used the palm as a model showing that pooled botanic-garden "metacollections" capture wild genetic diversity more efficiently than any single-garden collection. The IUCN records it as successfully reintroduced and subject to ex situ conservation, and a photo caption on Palmpedia records the largest known specimen in the continental United States at Fairchild Tropical Garden, Florida."

The palm's sap has long been tapped to make the drink known as "Mabí de Cacheo", which is also the main reason for its decline. Its Red List history reflects that pressure: assessed Endangered in 1978, Critically Endangered in 1998, and Critically Endangered again in the assessment of October 2024 published in 2025. Recommended actions include improving management of Jaragua National Park through regular patrols and sanctions for infractions, approaching those who make the drink to develop alternative livelihoods, and propagation in nurseries with planting in situ and ex situ alongside education campaigns.