Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, solitary-stemmed, medium-sized, unarmed, pleionanthic palms up to 30(–40) m tall.

Stems: Trunk columnar, naked, smooth or fibrous and longitudinally grooved and obscurely ringed with leaf scars.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged around the trunk. Leaves shortly costapalmate, sometimes briefly persistent and forming a skirt, blades flabellate, regularly divided into 1–nerved reduplicate segments with bifid apices; lateral segments from apex to base of blade progressively shorter and narrower. Base usually broadly cuneate. Lower surfaces, petioles, and major nerves lepidote. Veins parallel. Petioles elongate, concave, sometimes centrally ridged above, rounded below, variously lepidote, lanate, velutinous, terminating in a usually short, slightly blunt, often crescent–shaped ligule adaxially either completely covered by closely appressed, densely matted, lanate, or felt like scales or closely dotted with conspicuous bran-like scales, the margins thin and sharp. Sheaths fibrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in interfoliar inflorescences, these shorter than to exceeding the leaves, arcuate or pendulous, at least in fruit, slender with a terminal cluster (panicle) of simple or compound branches or with a few similar lateral clusters, peduncle and each lateral cluster subtended by several coriaceous, concave, lanceolate, boat–shaped bracts with tubular bases, often equaling the inflorescence, panicle upper branches undivided, middle branches divided into 1–2 branchlets, lower branches of 3–5 branchlets, ultimate branches subtended by open, small, membranous bracts and bearing solitary flowers, each flowering node subtended by a slender bracteole. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile or at least functionally staminate. 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 brown to black at maturity; small to large; globose to ellipsoid; usually falling with the pedicelliform calyx and staminal tube attached; stigmatic scar and remains of abortive carpels apical; exocarp smooth; mesocarp thin; fleshy; with flat longitudinal fibers; endocarp thin; cartilaginous. 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:

Elevation Range:

Historical Distribution

Images

Accepted Subtaxa (in Hawai'i) (28)

Pritchardia arecina Becc.

Pritchardia bakeri Hodel

Pritchardia beccariana Rock

Pritchardia flynnii Lorence & Gemmill

Pritchardia forbesiana Rock

Pritchardia glabrata Becc. & Rock

Pritchardia gordonii Hodel

Pritchardia hardyi Rock

Pritchardia hillebrandii Becc.

Pritchardia kaalae Rock

Pritchardia kahukuensis Caum

Pritchardia lanigera Becc.

Pritchardia lowreyana Rock ex Becc.

Pritchardia maideniana Becc.

Pritchardia martii (Gaudich.) H.Wendl.

Pritchardia minor Becc.

Pritchardia mitiaroana J.Dransf. & Y.Ehrh.

Pritchardia munroi Rock

Pritchardia napaliensis H.St.John

Pritchardia pacifica Seem. & H.Wendl.

Pritchardia perlmanii Gemmill

Pritchardia remota Becc.

Pritchardia schattaueri Hodel

Pritchardia thurstonii F.Muell. & Drude

Pritchardia viscosa Rock

Pritchardia vuylstekeana H.Wendl.

Pritchardia waialealeana Read

Pritchardia woodii Hodel

Uses and Culture

USES

Fronds used for temporary fishing heiau
Loulu is used to treat ‘ea and pa‘ao‘ao in children and adults. The leaf bud and inner flesh are combined with niu (coconut, Cocos nucifera), kōkea (white sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum), ‘ōhi‘a bark (Metrosideros spp.) and ‘ala‘alawainui pehu (Peperomia spp). All of the items are pounded into a liquid form and drunk three times a day (Chun 1994:196-197).
Loulu palm were erected to signify a temporary, special 'heiau loulu', where gods of fishing were seasonally propitiated (Abbott 1992:17). one of the most elegant fans.

CULTURE

The loulu fronds were used as an umbrella when the rainy Ku days arrived. "He Kaao no Pakaa" (Fornander [v.5 part i] 1918:77).

PROPAGATION/CULTIVATION

Easy. Mature seeds buried half way in pot of clean, well drained potting soil, water daily, sprout in a few months, plants of 1 foot can be put in ground/larger pot; if many species are grown in same vicinity seeds become hybridized- handpollinate to prevent this (Culliney and Koebele 1999:101–103 [P. remota]; Bornhorst 1996:64–65; Nagata 1992).