Livistona endauensis (Livistona endauensis)

Description

Hermaphroditic, Solitary palm. Trunk to 15 m tall, 12-20 cm in diameter; breast high, leaf scars obscure, internodes narrow, pale grey brown, petiole stubs at first persistent at the base only, but deciduous with age, vertical fissures shallow. Leaves about 75 in a globose to conical crown; petiole about 175 cm long, arching, orange to reddish-brown, about 15 mm wide by 12 mm wide, triangular in cross-section, adaxially concave, covered in thin, caducous, grey-brown indumentum, margins unarmed in the distal half, armed in the proximal half with single retrorsely recurved black spines, regularly spaced, 10- 14 mm long, 6-15 mm apart, distally becoming more widely separated; leaf-base fibres prominent, coarse, disintegrating; distally the fibres form a triangular, chocolate-brown appendage to 35 cm long, to 10 cm wide; lamina costapalmate, regularly segmented, circular to subcircular in outline, about 100 cm long, slightly undulate, adaxially bright green, abaxially lighter green, glabrous on both surfaces; lamina divided for about 61% of its length, with 60-70 segments, depth of apical cleft about 8% of the segment length, apical lobes rigid to occasionally pendulous through damage or age; midleaf segments about 3 cm wide where the segments diverge; outer segments about 0.8 cm wide where the segments diverge; parallel veins 4-5 each side of mid rib; transverse veins thinner than parallel veins; hastula conspicuous, about 10 mm high, triangular, crescent shaped. Inflorescences unbranched at the base, to 150 cm long, not extending beyond the limit of the crown, arching, branched to 3 orders; partial inflorescences about 8; peduncle about 60 cm long, laterally compressed at the base, 3 cm wide by 0.5 cm thick, about 2.5 cm wide distally by 1.0 cm thick; prophyll tubular, 30 cm long by 2.5 cm thick, dark brown, glabrous except for scattered caducous rust coloured indumentum; peduncular bract(s) lacking; rachis bracts tubular, glabrous; partial inflorescences to about 35 cm long; rachillae 6-10 cm long, about 0.25 cm in diameter, rigid, yellow, pubescent. Flowers solitary or in clusters of 2-3, sessile, globular, about 1 mm high, 1.5 mm wide, golden yellow; calyx basally tubular, ca 0.3 mm high, glabrous, 3-lobed, lobes triangular to 0.4 mm long by 1 mm wide; petals broadly triangular, to 1 mm long by 0.8 mm wide, glabrous, abaxially rugulate, adaxially striate; stamens basally fused to form a tube about 0.4 mm high; filaments very short, free; anthers about 0.1 mm in diam.; carpels about 0.6 mm high, style to about 0.2 mm high, stigma punctiform. Fruit obovoid to pyriform, about 16 mm long, 14 mm wide, bluish green; epicarp smooth, wrinkled on drying; mesocarp about 2 mm wide; endocarp crustaceous about 1 mm wide; pedicel 1-2 mm long. Seed globose, about 1 cm in diam., intruded shallowly by the testa. Eophyll 5-ribbed. (Dowe, J.L.)/Palmweb. Editing by edric.