Pholidocarpus ihur (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Pholidocarpus ihur (Giseke) Blume

Family: Palmae

Synonyms

• Borassus ihur Giseke.

Vernacular names

• Indonesia: ibul (Buru), ihur (Ambon), woka utan (Moluccas).

Distribution

Indonesia (Sulawesi, Moluccas). Occasionally cultivated elsewhere (e.g. in Java).

Uses

The stem is sometimes used for sago extraction, but its quality seems to be inferior. The leaves may be used for thatch, wrapping and water containers. The wood is hard and is sometimes used as timber.

Observations

• Robust, solitary, armed, pleonanthic, hermaphroditic tree palm with erect stem ringed with inconspicuous close leaf scars.
• Leaves fan-like, induplicate, costapalmate; petiole 1-3 m long, along the margins with robust, bulbous-based, horizontal spines; blade divided by deep splits into 3-4-fold segments which are further divided by shallower splits into single-fold segments.
• Inflorescence interfoliar, arching out of the crown, much-branched, about 1.5 m long; flowers sessile, yellow, bisexual; calyx cup-shaped, shallowly 3-lobed; corolla deeply divided into 3 lobes; stamens 6, filaments united into a tube; gynoecium 3-carpellate with slender style.
• Fruit developing from 1 carpel, globose, drupaceous, about 6 cm in diameter, brown; exocarp cracked into numerous low corky brown warts, mesocarp subfleshy, endocarp crustaceous with short fibres outside.
• Seed with massive endosperm.

Germination remote-tubular. It occurs in the lowlands, often in waterlogged soils. The genus Pholidocarpus Blume is closely related to Livistona R. Brown; it is distinguished by the deeply divided leaves with compound segments and the very large, often corky-warted fruits.

Selected sources

3, 32, 42, 46, 85. carbohydrates

Authors

• L.E. Groen, J.S. Siemonsma & P.C.M. Jansen