Pandanus leram (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Pandanus leram Jones ex Fontana var. andamanensium (Kurz) B.C. Stone

Family: Pandanaceae

Synonyms

• Pandanus andamanensium Kurz.

Vernacular names

• Indonesia: pandan wong (Sundanese).

Distribution

The Andaman Islands, Indonesia (southern coast of Java).

Uses

The leaves are used in Java to make mats for local use. However, the leaves are thick and leathery and only suitable for coarse work. In the Andaman Islands (India) the leaves are used to make various articles of apparel (e.g. ceremonial waist girdles) and for thatching. The fruits are eaten after cooking and the fibrous parts of the fruits are made into paintbrushes.

Observations

• A dioecious tree, 5-15(-18) m tall, not or sparingly branched, with a robust, fairly annulate trunk and more or less developed prop roots.
• Leaves rather thick and rigid, linear, 1.5-3 m × 8-12 cm, margin and underside of midrib with numerous slender prickles, apex tail-like, pellucid cross lines or transverse ribs absent.
• Male inflorescence a massive branched raceme of spikes; spikes oblong, composed of numerous phalanges each consisting of about 20 stamens on a stout column 6-7 mm long.
• Female inflorescence a solitary, globose head, composed of several-celled carpellate phalanges.
• Fruit a syncarpous polydrupe, ellipsoid to globose, 18-31 cm × 18-24 cm; carpels in fruit 7-15 cm × 3-7 cm, much broader than thick, red when ripe; stigmas 3-14, distributed over the top of the carpel, broad, flat, erecto-patent, in ripe carpels often caducous; connate endocarps slightly below the middle of the carpel.

In Java P. leram var. andamanensium is found in Barringtonia-association. In the Andaman Islands it is common in swampy locations. P. leram var. andamanensium is presumably the wild form of P. leram, whereas the other variety, P. leram var. leram (P. leram sensu stricto), is a more or less cultivated form (cultivar or group of cultivars), grown for its large edible fruits. According to B.C. Stone, P. leram is classified in subgenus Rykia, section Hombronia.

Selected sources

3, 4, 6, 30, 71, 139, 177. fibres

Authors

• M. Brink, P.C.M. Jansen & C.H. Bosch

• See also Pandanus (PROSEA Fruits and nuts) for the Fruit use.