Sihara palm

The Essence

"Ravenea glauca is a slender, solitary, dioecious feather palm endemic to Madagascar. RBGE reports that it grows wild in only two national parks, Andringitra and Isalo. It is a variable species: plants can be tall and slender in the canyons at Isalo, but can also flower when almost stemless in a dry river bed. The plant grown in gardens for decades is the Isalo canyon form, sold as R. glauca 'Isalo'; RarePalmSeeds notes it looks very different from the Andringitra plants on which the 1913 description was based, and that page states the Andringitra plant is not yet in cultivation (though the same nursery now also lists an 'Andringitra' form separately). Dransfield and Beentje likewise observed that the protologue describes Andringitra populations while all collections they had seen were of a later date, and that the habit sketch in the Flore de Madagascar (1945) was based on a photograph (Humbert 13698) that is actually R. xerophila. Some growers call it Mini-Majesty, assuming a smaller Ravenea rivularis, but Palmpedia points out the two have little in common: R. glauca is far more delicate and slimmer-trunked, and lacks rivularis's affinity for water. It is not eaten, since the heart is bitter. Palmpedia calls it one of the most promising palms for cultivation Madagascar has to offer, and remarkably bug and pathogen resistant."

Described in 1913 by Henri Jumelle and Henri Perrier de la Bathie (Ann. Mus. Colon. Marseille, ser. 3, 1: 56). Dransfield and Beentje's conservation note records uncertainty about the status of the Andringitra populations, with no plants collected there since 1922; elsewhere the species was known only from the Isalo, where they put the population size at probably a few hundred. RBGE gives a figure of an estimated 800 trees left in natural habitat and warns that people harvesting wild seed for the international horticultural trade put pressure on the ability of wild populations to regenerate, an added risk in a species whose plants are either male or female.