Tahina spectabilis

About

Tahina spectabilis, the tahina palm, also called blessed palm or dimaka is a species of gigantic palm that is found only in the Analalava District of northwestern Madagascar where its range is only twelve acres, one of the most extreme examples of endemism known. It can grow 18 m (59 ft) tall and has palmate leaves over 5 m (16 ft) across. The trunk is up to 20 in (51 cm) thick, and sculpted with conspicuous leaf scars. An individual tree was discovered when in flower in 2007; it was first described the following year as a result of photographs being sent to Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom for identification. The palm is thought to live for up to fifty years before producing an enormous inflorescence up to 19.5 ft (5.9 m) in height and width, surpassed in size only by Corypha spp. and by Metroxylon salomonense and, being monocarpic, subsequently dying. The inflorescence, a panicle, consists of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of three-flowered clusters which bloom in three consecutive, synchronized "cohorts" or flushes of bloom. The nearest equivalent pattern of flowering is in the flowering vine Bougainvillea where the three flowers bloom sequentially, but not synchronized. Fewer than one hundred adult individuals of the species are thought to exist and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated it as "critically endangered".

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