Anivona

The Essence

"Ravenea sambiranensis is a solitary, dioecious palm endemic to Madagascar, ranging from Manongarivo to Marojejy and down the east coast to Vangaindrano, with an outlier population in the Bemaraha area more than 700 km from the main range. It is strikingly variable: trunks run from 2 to 30 m, from about 6 m in montane populations to roughly 25 m in moist lowland forest — trees stay small on coastal white sand and on high mountains, yet on the island of Nosy Be the palm reaches canopy size in high forest. The crown carries 10–28 arching pinnate leaves, and the curved leaves distinguish it from the similar Ravenea madagascariensis, whose leaves are straight. Bees and small flying beetles visit the flowers — the male ones custard-yellow — and the Madagascar blue pigeon eats the orange to coral-red fruit, passing seed that germinates well. In Madagascar the palm is widely used: the very hard black outer wood is cut into planks for floorboards, and the young heart is eaten cooked with manioc — slightly bitter, which is why one local name, Mafahely, means 'a little bit bitter'. Harvesting the heart kills the tree, as the palm cannot produce side shoots. The IUCN assesses it as Least Concern: it occurs in almost all of eastern Madagascar's protected areas and tolerates disturbance well."

Ravenea amara Jum. (1927) is a heterotypic synonym: in The Palms of Madagascar (1995), Dransfield and Beentje found that material from the Manongarivo Mountains blurred the distinction between the two names, and they treated R. sambiranensis as a single variable species rather than splitting it into geographic subspecies.