Hispaniola wine palm

The Essence

"Pseudophoenix vinifera is a solitary, monoecious palm endemic to Hispaniola, with POWO giving its native range as Haiti to the southwestern Dominican Republic. Zona's 2002 revision of the genus describes a grey trunk 5–15 m tall, swollen into a pronounced bottle shape and slenderest above the bulge, carrying about two dozen spreading leaves 2–3 m long; other accounts report considerably taller plants, to about 20 m or even 25 m. That swelling is the character that most readily separates it from its congeners, along with rachillae directed toward the tip of the inflorescence and a shallow triangular calyx. Its name records what nearly destroyed it: the sweet sap, reached by felling the palm and extracting the pith, especially from the swollen part of the stem, was fermented into wine. Because harvesting killed the tree, exploitation reduced populations so severely that the practice itself has largely been abandoned, though Zona notes palms are still occasionally used this way. In Haiti only two populations survive; in the Dominican Republic scattered palms occur in Azua and Barahona, nowhere in large numbers. IUCN assesses the species as Vulnerable. In gross appearance it most closely resembles P. ekmanii, but its inflorescence, flowers and fruit are nearer those of P. lediniana. It is a striking ornamental, very slow, and rare in cultivation outside collectors' gardens and botanic collections."

Palms were felled and the pith extracted, particularly from the swollen section of the stem, and the sap fermented — a practice that, because it killed the tree, almost drove the species to extinction before it was largely given up. Other local uses recorded are leaves as cover for huts or makeshift shelters and fruits as livestock feed. Palmpedia reports two dozen palms remaining in a grove that held several hundred when it was re-discovered forty years earlier. Within the genus, the closely related P. ekmanii and P. lediniana are both assessed as Critically Endangered.