Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Very large palms up to ca. 20 m or more tall.

Stems: Trunk very heavy to moderate, gray, smooth, ca. 50 or more cm in diameter.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged, the crown rather large, with more than 30 leaves. Blades 90–120 cm long, slightly wavy. Surfaces blades waxy–glaucous to pale green, lower surface with scattered grayish lepidia, lower costae at base of blades and petioles glabrous or early sparsely fugacious lepidote. Veins parallel. Petioles lax, flexible, with light–colored, paleaceous, appressed scales on upper portion of lower surface, at first lightly covered with light–colored appressed scales on upper surface. only a few fibers at the base and edge of the petioles. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences equaling or shorter than petioles, panicles rather large, glabrous throughout, divided into several spreading primary branches, lowermost panicle branches with up to 10– 12 spirally arranged branchlets, the lowest of which is sometimes divided again, or are forked, upper branches simple; rachillae glabrous, subulate apically, with flowers uncrowded, spirally arranged, each of which is subtended by a very small bracteole 2–3 mm long; prophyll and peduncular bracts very sparsely and inconspicuously lepidote, usually glabrate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile. Calyx cupular, shallowly 3-lobed, prominently nerved or smooth when dry. Corolla of 3 petals, adnate basally to the staminal filament tube to about the height of the calyx, the distinct lobes valvate in bud, caducous as the flower expands, prominently pocketed and furrowed within, prominently nerved when dry. Stamens 6; filaments flattened, thickish, connate basally into a tube equaling or exceeding the calyx and surrounding the carpels, then distinct and abruptly subulate, not inflexed at apex; anthers erect in bud, dorsifixed, spreading–erect to versatile at anthesis, oblong in outline, bifid basally nearly to the point of insertion, apex emarginate, the connective narrow; anther sacs longitudinally and laterally dehiscent. Ovary superior; carpels 3, normally only 1 maturing, coherent only basally; ovules 1 per carpel, with the broad–based styles connate above into a trigonous column tapering to a shallowly trifid stigma; ovules anatropous, erect, attached at the base of the placenta.

Fruit: Fruit shiny; black; mostly ellipsoid fruits 2 cm long and 1.5 cm wide when mature. Seeds distinct from endocarp except at the hilum; shiny; endosperm homogeneous except for a shallow invagination of the seed coat below the raphe; embryo lateral near the base opposite the raphe.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest along the northern part of the Powerline Trail and vicinity; Kaua'i.

Elevation Range: 450–800 m.