Botanists have discovered a new species of palm tree that is so big it can be seen from space. The pyramid-shaped giant also has another notable feature—its bizarre life cycle requires the plant to “kill itself” by flowering.
The palm was discovered accidentally by a French family walking in remote northwestern Madagascar, according to the publishers of their study. The couple, Xavier and Nathalie Metz, who run a cashew farm in Madagascar, stumbled upon the palm as they were walking with their family at a limestone outcrop in the hills of Analalava district.
The palm's trunk is over 18 meters (58.5 feet) high and its leaves
are an extraordinary five meters (16.25 feet) in diameter, which could
make them the largest ever known among flowering plants. It is not only
a new species, but is also a new genus, in a classification of its own.
Experts at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London, say the
plant grows to astounding heights before the stem tip bursts into
branches full of hundreds of tiny flowers.
"Each flower is capable of being pollinated and developing into
fruit and soon drips with nectar and is surrounded by swarming insects
and birds,'' according to journal publisher Blackwell Publishing. The
nutrient reserves of the palm become completely depleted as soon as it
fruits and the entire tree collapses in a macabre demise. The plant is
so massive, it can even be seen on Google Earth.''
The Metz family was so amazed by the tree that they took pictures of
it and posted them on the web. Kew research fellow John Dransfield, an
expert on Madagascar's palms, saw the photos and asked a local
researcher to send him material.
DNA analysis proved the plant to be a new genus within a palm tribe
called Chuniophoeniceae. Only three other genera within this tribe
exist, scattered across the Arabian peninsula, Thailand and China.
"Coupled with the great scientific interest of the palm is the fact
that it is such an amazingly spectacular species and with such an
unusual life cycle,'' said Dransfield. "In a way, this palm is every
bit as significant from a biological point of view as when the
extraordinary Aye-aye lemur was first discovered.''
The Aye-aye, a denizen of Madagascar first described in 1788, is the
largest nocturnal primate in the world, and is believed to use
echolocation to detect grubs in tree branches, which it extracts with
its long fingers.
Less than a hundred individuals of the palm probably exist, which
means protecting it from habitat loss and bounty hunters will be a huge
challenge.
More than 90 per cent of Madagascar's 10,000 plant species occur
nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately, less than one fifth of the
island's cover of native vegetation remains intact.
Posted by Rebecca Sato
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Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP) Paris