Poonsak's fan palm

Description

Solitary or clustered and/or gregarious understory palm to 6 m tall, if forming clumps then usually of 1 tall plant and several small ones at base. Stem 3-5 cm in diam. without sheaths and obscurely ringed, 5-8 cm in diam. with sheaths. Leaves 15-20, palmately divided, spreading; petiole 1 m long, armed only in basal 25 cm with stubby thorns, these backward-curved, 3 mm long, set ca. 8 mm apart on lateral margins; blade 70- 90 cm wide, orbicular, divided to base into 10 segments, middle or lateral ones largest, to 46 x 8 cm wide, truncately praemorse, 9-nerved, distinctly toothed, lobes 6 mm high, other segments decreasing slightly in size toward petiole, these 30-40 x 3-5 cm, truncately praemorse,3-5-nerved. Inflorescences interfoliar, equalling or slightly exceeding leaves, to 1.5 m long, spreading, peduncle to 50 cm long; inflorescence bearing 7 partial inflorescences in apical 2/3, each a simple unbranched rachilla and each subtended by its own bract, these tubular and closely sheathing in basal half, conspicuously inflated in apical half, lower partial inflorescences about 20 cm apart, decreasing to 5 cm apart at apex of inflorescenge, lowest rachilla to 15 cm long, uppermost to 5 cm long, each rachilla only narrowly diverging from inflorescence rachis, bracts, rachis, and rachillae densely covered with deciduous brownish felt-like indument, that of rachillae especially thick and with tightly appressed white hairs. Flowers seen just past anthesis, 10 x 4 mm, bullet-shaped; calyx 4 x 3 mm, shallowly lobed, lobes rounded; corolla about 2 1/2 times as high as calyx, petals 8 x 2.75 mm, long-ovate, acute, boat-shaped; staminal ring 2-3 mm high, about 2 times height of ovary, stamens 6, filaments short, about half the height of petals, anthers 1. 75 mm long; pistil 2.5 x 2.5 mm, globular, glabrous, truncate apically, style 3-4 mm long, slender, nearly equalling petals. Fruits seen immature, 8 x 6 mm, +/- oblong, green, sessile or on a short pedicel, just exceeding perianth, said by local people to be 10-13 x 7-8 mm long, oblong, and red when mature; fruiting perianth 1 cm long, 8 mm wide at tip, calyx 4-5 mm high, sepals connate in basal 1/2-2/3, lobes acute apically but often splitting and tattering into numerous narrow truncate segments, petals 1 cm long, long-ovate, acute, spreading around base offruit, perianth with similar indument as rachillae only thicker on calyx than on corolla.