Norfolk Island palm

The Essence

"Rhopalostylis baueri is one of only two species in Rhopalostylis; the other, R. sapida, is the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. R. baueri itself grows on Norfolk Island — the type locality — and on Raoul Island in the Kermadec Islands, where it is abundant in both dry and wet forest and is sometimes the main canopy dominant. It is a solitary, pinnate-leaved palm with a trunk to 15 m tall, a smooth, slightly bulging green crownshaft, and leaves 3–4 m long with closely set, sharply ascending leaflets. It flowers and fruits in December–January: the young flowering branches are at first pale cream, the petals white or pink, and the fruit, about 13 × 12 mm, ripens from green to brick-red or bright red. That large fruit is the main character separating it from R. sapida, whose fruit is mostly up to 7 mm in diameter. Ripe fruits are a favourite food of the endangered Norfolk Island parakeet, while on Norfolk Island rats eat the fruit and young seedlings. On Raoul Island the palm has greatly extended its range since introduced animals were removed: the IUCN assessment records how it spread from cliff and tree-fern refugia across the island after feral goats were eradicated in 1984, and expansion continued following the later removal of rats. The IUCN assessed the species in 2023 (published 2025) as Near Threatened under criterion D2, with an increasing population trend — the main identified risk being an eruption of Raoul Island's very active volcano — and New Zealand lists it as At Risk – Naturally Uncommon, reflecting its tiny natural range rather than active threats. In mainland New Zealand it is grown as a faster-growing alternative to R. sapida."

Areca sapida Sol. ex Endl. (1833), described from Ferdinand Bauer's 1804 Norfolk Island specimens and drawings, is the earliest validly published name for any plant now placed in Rhopalostylis; Bauer's palm specimens in Vienna were destroyed during the Second World War, leaving his drawings as the type. Hooker's Areca baueri — proposed provisionally in 1853 and accepted in his Handbook of the New Zealand Flora (1864) — was founded on the same Bauer material and is treated by POWO as the basionym; the combination Rhopalostylis baueri was published in Linnaea 39: 234 (1875), and POWO today lists 11 synonyms. The Kermadec Islands palm was long treated as a separate species or variety (R. cheesemanii) before de Lange et al. reduced it to synonymy with R. baueri in 2005. Early settlers on Norfolk Island ate the growing tip as a vegetable, said to taste 'like a nut when raw and like an artichoke bottom when boiled'.