PALMS Jeanson & Guo: Arenga longicarpa Vol. 55(3) 2011 MARC L. JEANSON The New York Botanical Arenga Garden Bronx, NY 10458-5126 USA longicarpa,a
[email protected] Poorly Known AND GUO LIXIU South China Botanical Garden, Species from Chinese Academy of Sciences Road Xingke723#, South China Guangzhou 510650, China
[email protected] 1. Map of Guangdong Province showing the two localities (triangles) visited to find Arenga longicarpa. In this paper, the authors describe the hunt for a little known species of Arenga, A longicarpa, restricted to South China. In February 2010 Marc Jeanson visited China and poorly known Arenga longicarpa. Chinese as part of his continuing revision of the palms are mainly distributed in the southern caryotoid palms (Arenga, Caryota and provinces of Hainan (26 native species on the Wallichia). China has an interesting palm flora island) and Yunnan. Native palms are also comprising ca. 73 native species, out of which present in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and 27 are endemic, including the seldom-seen Fujian (Pei et al. 1991) but are rather scarce in 122 PALMS 55(3): 122–130 PALMS Jeanson & Guo: Arenga longicarpa Vol. 55(3) 2011 2. Caryota maxima, a common palm in Guangdong province. these provinces (Henderson 2009). Some of Mart. This palm is very common in the area them, however, are particularly noteworthy, of Dinghu Shan and is, without a doubt, such as Guihaia in Guangxi (Dransfield et al. conspecific with Caryota maxima. 1985). Our next item on the agenda was the illusive The first stop on Jeanson’s itinerary was Arenga longicarpa.