The palm also has an unusual trait for a tree: It waits many decades – perhaps a century -to flower and then self-destructs in the process.

Palm trees are found today on every continent except Antarctica. So far, botanists have classified 2600 palms species into 202 genera. The Arecaceae or Palmae family is divided into six sub-families, which are sub-divided into tribes, then into genera, and finally species.

So botanists were not surprised to find a new species, T. spectabilis, on Madagascar in 2007. Ninety percent of Madagascar's 10,000 plant species are found nowhere else on earth. And, of Madagascar’s more than 170 palm species, only six are found elsewhere.

It is the palm’s appearance and behaviour that surprises botanists.

T. spectabilis looks like a Sri Lankan palm belonging to genus Corypha of Tribe Corypheae.

"I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the images posted on the web. The palm appeared superficially like the  Talipot Palm of Sri Lanka , but that had never been recorded for Madagascar," says John Dransfield, co-author of Palms of Madagascar.

After analysing samples of the Madagascar palm, researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens' Jordell Laboratory in Kew, U.K., created a new genus, Tahina, within the Chuniophoeniceae tribe. T. Spectabilis is the only species within the new Tahina genus. No other member of the Tribe Chuniophoeniceae has ever been found in Madgascar.

Previously known Chuniophoeniceae genera are: Nannorrhops found in Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; Kerriodoxa found in Southern Thailand; and Chuniophoenix in Vietnam, Southern China and Hainan.

How did a tree with relatives in Asia wind up on an island of the coast of Africa?

Tree flowers spectacularly but only once and then dies

Like the Talipot Palm (C. umbraculifera), T. spectabilis, grows to gigantic heights and creates a flowering pyramid of branches - known as an inflorescence - at maturity.

>This gigantic inflorescence contains hundreds of tiny flowers, which are fertilized by birds and insects, then mature into fruit.

But such spectacular flowering uses up all of a palm tree's resources (nutrient stores). So T. spectabilis and C. umbraculifera (Talipot) palms bloom only once. As their fruit matures, they die.

Palm Raises More Questions For Botanists

While scientists puzzle over how a member of the Chuniophoeniceae Tribe found its way to Madagascar, they are also asking why a gigantic palm species, with such spectacular flowering and fruiting, went undetected for so long?

The tiny population of T. spectabilis (less than 100 live on the Island of Madagascar) may be one explanation.

Dransfield has another theory. He thinks T. spectabilis may have been undetected by researchers because it lives longer than other self-destructive palms, such as C. umbraculifera, which matures at 30 to 80 years.

Dransfield thinks T. spectabilis may take 100 years or longer to mature. In that case, no one may have noticed it in its spectacular flowering phase. If so, botanists may need decades to truly understand this new genus and its place on the Tree of Life.

That understanding may challenge current theories about plant speciation and the complexity of life on earth.

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Links

Madagascar Palm Discovery