Grand inazi

The Essence

"Ravenea moorei is a robust solitary palm endemic to Grande Comore (Ngazidja) in the Comoro Islands, growing 15–20 m tall in submontane rainforest, its surviving wild trees scattered through high-rainfall forest on the western slopes of Mount Karthala. It is one of only two Ravenea species found outside Madagascar, and much the larger of the Comorian pair — its relative R. hildebrandtii is a dwarf of about 4 m. For years the species was believed extinct in the wild: only two female trees were known, last seen in 1993, and the specimens growing at Kew — chief among them a male over 12 m tall in the Palm House, incapable of setting seed — were believed to be the only ones left in the world. Then, in 2023, a field team led by Kew's Bill Baker found 12 adult palms in Comorian forest, and two expeditions with Comorian partners across 2023–2024 brought the known population to around 50. The palm remains Critically Endangered, threatened by forest clearance for crops such as bananas and cassava and by invasive plants such as strawberry guava, but seed collected on the expeditions is now being propagated at Kew and in the Comoros."

Before its formal description in 1986, the palm was grown under the name Ravenea hildebrandtii. In October 1993 DeArmand Hull collected seed from the only two female trees then known, above Mitsamouli at the north end of Grande Comore at about 500 m; no wild trees were recorded after that, and the species came to be considered extinct in the wild. The upcoming renovation of Kew's Palm House — home to a towering male specimen, among the Kew plants then believed the last of the species — prompted a rescue mission: a 2023 field team led by Kew palm specialist Prof. Bill Baker rediscovered 12 adults, and teams from Kew, the National Herbarium of the University of Comoros and Karthala National Park completed two expeditions across 2023 and 2024. Seed is being propagated at the Comoros National Herbarium nursery and at Kew, and young palms are being introduced into public planting schemes in Moroni, though Bill Baker has warned the newly found population may represent the species' "last stand". It is probably closely related to R. robustior of Madagascar.