March Dypsis sp. ‘florencei’ Spring 2015 Palm Sale featuring Hundreds of Species of Rare and Exotic Palms Free palm seedling to every guest! (while supplies last) Sale Issue Dypsis pembana The Palm Report Photo by Tim McKernan at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden March 28 & 29 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM In This Issue Palms of Madagascar…………...……. Page 4 Membership Renewal Form ….…….... Page 9 South Florida Palm Society 2015 Spring Palm Show & Sale March 28 & 29 9:30AM TO 4:30 PM at FTBG Special pre-show soiree for members March 27 at 5:30PM 2 SFPS Board of Directors 2015 Lenny Goldstein President Ellis Brown Vice President Tim McKernan Treasurer Lou Sguros Corresponding Secretary Ken Heinrich Recording Secretary Rick Johnson Director Mike Tevelonis Director Kevin McLeod Director Steve Pearson Director Bill Olson, Jr. Director This publication is produced by the South Florida Palm Society as a service to its members. The statements and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the SFPS, its Board of Directors or its editors. Likewise, the appearance of ad- vertisers does not constitute an endorsement of the products or featured services. Our Mission The South Florida Palm Society is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to disseminate information about and encourage interest in palms and the use of those plants. Funds donated to the Chapter through its annual sales have been used to help support Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Montgomery Botanical Center and other institutions, individual research, planting projects, and educational efforts. 3 Palms of Madagascar One lazy day about 80 million years ago, Mother Nature was puttering in the garden when she had an epiphany. Of course, no light bulb popped on above her head, because neither light bulbs nor cartoons had been invented yet. Still it was a monumental insight. "Palm hobbyists are good," she declared to herself, "and I want to make them happy, even giddy. I think I'll create dozens of beautiful species endowed with great variety − tall, short, palmate, pinnate, smooth, spiny, solitary, clumping." But Mother Nature has always had a mischievous side – after all, she invented the National Enquirer – so she decided to make palm lovers overcome mighty challenges in order to reach her prized plants. With the help of several unpaid assistants, she designed steamy forests, bone-dry deserts, rushing rivers, impenetrable thickets, foul-tempered animals, and razor-sharp rock formations that could rend human flesh. To accommodate all that diversity, Mother Nature needed lots of room, so she plunked her fabulous creations down on a large piece of real estate in the Indian Ocean. And she called that fair land Madagascar, which translates roughly to "Can't get there from here." Her mission accomplished, Mother Nature spent the winter relaxing in Palm Beach while dispatching her unpaid assistants to Boston to shovel snow. Mischievous, indeed! When palm lovers finally reached Madagascar eons later, they found a marvelous collection. There are about 4 200 species native to the island, and almost all of them are endemic, that is, not found naturally in any other place on earth. What else would you expect from Mother Nature? Good old Mom certainly fulfilled her goal. Many of the palms of Madagascar are magnificent – valuable eco- nomically and highly-prized ornamentally. But, in complete seriousness, not all is well in Paradise. Despite Madagascar's size − it's the fourth-largest island in the world, over 2,400 miles long − its burgeoning pop- ulation has long exerted pressures on native flora of all sorts. Take the endemic Royal Poinciana, for instance. This beautiful flowering tree is one of the most popular ornamentals planted in the tropics worldwide, but there are now more of them in southern Florida than in Madagascar. Fortunately, the Poinciana is not yet nearing extinction on the island, but native palms have not been so lucky. Popu- lation pressures on them are manifested in several ways, primarily via logging and farming, but also by harvesting for hearts-of-palm, a practice which guarantees death for single-stemmed specimens. And, sadly, the problem is ex- acerbated by disreputable seed dealers who simply cut down palms – without a thought of sustaining the species – in order to satisfy their customers’ requests. In October 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which for 50 years has assessed plants and animals headed for extinction, issued a solemn and alarming warning in an update to its Red List of Threat- ened Species, reporting that 83% of Madagascar's na- tive palms are considered threatened. Within the 5 IUCN's rankings of imminence of extinction, the category 'Threatened' comprises three levels of increasing risk: Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered. Omi- nously, a substantial number of those palms now deemed Threatened on the Red List are already Endangered or even Critically Endangered. (In the IUCN system, even the bottommost rank, Least Concern, "does not imply that these species are of no conservation concern.") "The figures on Madagascar's palms are truly terrifying, especially as the loss of palms impacts both the unique biodiversity of the island and its people," said Dr. Jane Smart, Global Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conserva- tion Group and Director of IUCN’s Global Species Pro- gram. "This situation cannot be ignored." Adding to the concern was Dr. William [Bill] Baker, the head of palm research at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who stated, "The majority of Madagascar's palms grow in the island's eastern rain forests, which have already been reduced to less than one-quarter of their original size, and which continue to disappear." The high extinction risk faced by Madagascar's palms, he concluded, "reflects the decline in these forests, which threatens all of the remark- able wildlife that occurs there.” Some problem-solving initiatives are underway in Mada- gascar: The country created a national seed bank, which has assisted one local community in its effort to conserve a critically-endangered species, Tahina spectabilis. In that program, "sustainably-harvested seeds are sold through a commercial palm seed merchant. The money flows back to the local people who use it to renovate buildings and grow food more productively." The Madagascar National Parks Association also plays a role in conserving palms 6 by administering a system of protected areas. But only 10% of the island is in such areas, so not many of the palm species benefit. In any attempt to learn about Malagasy palms, it is im- possible to overlook the contributions made by Drs. John Dransfield and Henk Beentje, whose work has given un- precedented clarity to understanding the island’s species. Even though the first descriptions of Madagascar’s native palms were published in the 1820s, relatively little botan- izing occurred there for the next 140 years. But in 1963 Dr. Harold E. (Hal) Moore, Jr. took up the cause by mak- ing collections on the island. Moore was a botany profes- sor at Cornell University, as well as the founding editor of the International Palm Society’s journal, Principes (later Palms). He made follow-up trips in 1971 and 1972, but thereafter political conditions interfered with collec- tion by foreign botanists, and Moore was unable to return to Madagascar before his rather premature death in 1980. In the mid-’80s, conditions improved enough for scientists to resume visiting the island for field research. Moore’s work was taken up by Dransfield, a botanist at the Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, who had become co-editor of Principes with Dr. Natalie Uhl of Cornell. Dransfield and Uhl also embarked on completing a broader phase of Moore’s studies, and in 1987 they pub-lished Genera Palmarum: A Classification of Palms Based on the Work of Harold E. Moore, Jr. By the time Dransfield began wrapping up the Genera Palmarum manuscript for publication, “it had become ob- vious that most of the real mysteries remaining in the palm family related to the palms of Madagascar. Not only 7 were Madagascar palms not well known outside Mada- gascar, but the material available for comparing them with other palms was often very incomplete.” Based on this, his own epiphany, Dransfield initiated a Madagascar palm project by making a collecting trip there in 1986, and then made additional visits to the island in 1988 and 1989. A major breakthrough occurred in 1990, when Paul Preston, president of McDonald’s Restaurants Limited (UK), approached Kew with an offer of funding for a four -year research program. Dransfield’s Madagascar palm project was chosen to receive the grant, and it’s no exag- geration at all to say that most of what we now know about those plants is owed to the consumption of Big Macs. Dr. Henk Beentje, already a collaborator with Dransfield, was the successful applicant for a three-year postdoctoral position to work with him on the hamburger-fueled grant, both at Kew and in Madagascar. Once, in praising his younger colleague, Dransfield quipped that Beentje was very valuable to the project because he liked to climb trees. Beentje must truly have loved scaling palms, because he soon collected a wealth of voucher specimens. Along the way, he recognized Preston’s role in the Madagascar pro- ject by naming a species, Dypsis prestoniana, in his honor. In 1995 the research partners concluded their enor- mous project by publishing The Palms of Madagascar, a thoroughgoing and beautifully-illustrated work compris- ing the island’s species in a mere 475 pages. Just how important have Dransfield and Beentje been in increasing our understanding of Madagascar’s palms? 8 Dypsis cabadae Dypsis prestonia SFPS MEMBERSHIP & RENEWAL FORM ( ) New Member ( ) Renewing Member ( ) Change of Address PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY Name: _________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________________ City, State: _____________________________________________________ Zip code: _________________ Country: ____________________________ E-mail: ______________________________________Phone:____________ Membership is $20.00 annually and is on a calendar year basis.