Pholidocarpus (PROSEA)
Introduction |
Pholidocarpus Blume
- Protologue: in Schult. & Schult. f., Syst. Veg. 7(2): 1308 (1830).
- Family: Palmae
- Chromosome number: x= unknown; 2n= unknown
Vernacular names
- Malaysia: kepau.
Origin and geographic distribution
Pholidocarpus comprises about 6 species occurring in southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Moluccas.
Uses
The trunk of Pholidocarpus is used for poles and posts in local house building, and in Peninsular Malaysia for piling of wharves.
Several species have been cultivated for ornamental purposes. Sago of poor quality is occasionally harvested from P. ihur . The leaves may be used for thatch. The palm cabbage (apex) of some species is reputed to be edible.
Production and international trade
The trunks of Pholidocarpus are used comparatively rarely and on a local scale only.
Properties
The peripheral wood of Pholidocarpus is very hard and durable.
Botany
Armed, pleonanthic, solitary, often large palms up to 35(-45) m tall; pole straight, slender, up to 30 cm in diameter, inconspicuously but densely ringed with leaf scars. Leaves costapalmate; sheath disintegrating into a conspicuous mass of fibres; petiole armed with robust spines; blade split into 3-4-fold elements, these further divided into single-fold segments. Inflorescence borne between the leaves, solitary, branched to 4 orders; peduncle robust. Flowers bisexual, solitary or in clusters of 2-3 on low tubercles, golden-yellow; calyx shallowly 3-lobed; petals 3, valvate, united at base; stamens 6, filaments united into a tube; ovary superior, 3-carpellate with a single ovule in each cell, carpels united distally into a slender style, stigma punctate. Fruit a large drupe, developing from 1 carpel, globose, smooth or with low corky warts. Seed with homogeneous endosperm, intrusion of seed-coat lateral. Seedling with remote-tubular germination; eophyll entire, lanceolate, plicate.
Flowers of P. macrocarpus are open only for about a day, after which they fall; they have a strong sweet-sour smell.
Pholidocarpus is closely related to Livistona , differing only in the usually corky-warted and large fruits, leaves that are divided into compound segments and subtle differences in the flowers. It belongs to the subtribe Livistoninae of the tribe Corypheae within the subfamily Coryphoideae .
Ecology
Pholidocarpus is found fairly commonly in primary lowland rain forest, especially in freshwater and peat-swamp forest and along streams, rarely away from waterlogged soils.
Silviculture Pholidocarpus can be propagated by seed.
Genetic resources and breeding
Except for some specimens of P. kingianus and P. macrocarpus being cultivated in botanic gardens, there are no records of ex situ conservation of Pholidocarpus .
Prospects
It is unlikely that there will be any commercial prospects for Pholidocarpus , except perhaps as an ornamental.
Literature
70, 98, 163, 289, 290, 436, 499, 563, 1110, 1176, 1210.