The Status of Palm Taxonomy* Hanor-L E

64 PRINCIPES [Vol. 3 The Status of Palm Taxonomy* Hanor-l E. Moone, Jn. It may be well, at the outsetof a con- plants, some accounts dating back to sideration of palm taxonomy, to define Greek civilization. Few palms were the term taxonomy. Briefly, it concerns known to the ancients. however. and the identification, naming, and classifi- even in 1753 Linnaeus wrote about only cation of plants (or animals). Identifi- nins-hssa Catechu (the betel palm), cation is the determination of a plant as Borassusflabellit'er (the toddy palm of being identical with or similar to another India), Calamus Rotang (a rattan and already known plant or, if all known palm), Caryota urens (an Indian fish- possibilities are eliminated, its determi- tail palm) , Chamaerops humilis (the nation as new to science. Naming in- only palm native in Europe) , Cocosnu' volves the determination of the correct cilera (the coconut), Corypha umbracu' name of a known plant according to the tilera (the talipot palm of India), and nomenclatural system accepted inter- two date palms, Phoenix dactylifera, or nationally, so we may have a means of the cultivated date, and the wild date referring to the plant. Classification is which he called El,ate sylaestris, btft the placing of a plant or group of plants which we know today as Phoenix sylaes' in categories within the framework of tris. Linnaeus depended largely on a mastersystem which tries to show rela- earlier accountsfor his study-those of tionships among the various components Rheedewho wrote o{ the Malabar coast of the plant kingdom. Ideally, all the in India, of Rumphius, whose Het Am- techniques of the science of botany boinscheKrui.d,-Boek or Herbarium Am- should be used in the identification, boinense published in 174I-1755 des- naming, and classification of plants- cribed palms and many other plants of morphology and anatomy (the study of the Moluccas and adjacent areas, and the external and internal structure of a of other writers who recorded botanical plant), cytology and genetics (the study information noted in their travels. of cell and reproductive mechanisms As more and more parts of the world and of inheritance), physiology (the 'rvereexplored by personswho collected study of plant functions), paleobotany and cataloguedits plant resources,the (the study of plants now mostly extinct list of palms increased. In the early but preservedin the fossil record). nineteenth century a Dutch botanist, Having very generally defined taxon- C. L. Blume, collected and wrote about omy, we may be better able to appreciate palms of the East Indies; Baron von the present status of the taxonomy of Humboldt gave accountsof American palms by tracing in outline the history palms; William Griffith, an English- of the study of palms. Modern taxonomy man in the employ of the East India goes back to 1753 when Linnaeus gave Company, published fine studies of the us a system of naming plants that was Indian palms; Liebmann, a Dane, col- easy to understand and to use. Before lected them in Mexico. Thus, using the that time, travelers and early botanists experienceof these men, Von Martius, or herbalists had written about many who had spent two years in Brazil him- self, was able to produce between 1829 * Presented at the Palm Conference. Fairchild Tropical Garden, April lB. 1958. and 1850 a monumentalthree volume lesel MOORE: TAXONOMY 65 work on the natural history of palms, many of which duplicate one another in the Historia Naturd.lis Palmarum, in one or more ways), which he' accounted for those species But despitetwo centuriesof work, our then known, a number small when com- knowledgeof palms is painfully incom- pared with the total today. plete. Most palms have been described In the latter part of the nineteenth from herbarium specimensbrought from century, much important work was done far parts of the world to botanicallabo- with palms, principally by R. H. C. C. ratories and museumshere and abroad. Scheffer from the botanic garden at These specimenscould give but part of Buitenzorg, Java (now Bogor, Indo- the whole story, for few botanists were nesia). Hermann Wendland from Han- so fortunate as to study palms in the over, Germany, J. Barbosa Rodrigues, field as well as in the laboratory and J. W. H. Trail, and O. Drude on palms thus to provide us with more complete of Brazil, and Odoardo Beccari of Italy accounts. on palms from the islands of the Pacific This brings us to the presentstatus of and continental Asia. From these ac- palm taxonomy. Today, as a result of countsand from the study o{ dried speci- the exploration of the world's tropics, mens of palms stored at the Royal Bo- we have a permanentrecord in the form tanic Garden,Kew, England, Sir Joseph of dried specimens,incomplete as they Hooker was able to write another study may be, representing some 2,600 or of palms (in Bentham and Hooker f., more different speciesof palms as op- Cenera Plantarum.) in 1883, this time posed to only 300 that can be studied dealing comprehensivelywith the genera more intensivelyfrom plantsnow known as they were then understood.Following in cultivation. These spe,cimenshave him, Otto Drude wrote a similar but less been studied by various botanists, we detailed study for Engler and Prantl, have names for the speciesthey repre- Die natiir lichen P t'Ianz ent' a,milie n sent, and we have been able to fit these (18Be) . species into genera, the genera into From the beginning of the twentieth tribes, the tribes into subfamilies,giving century to the present, such men as us the outline, though still a very im- Beccari in Italy, Max Burret in Berlin, perfect one, of a systemor hierarchy of C. X. Furtado in Singapore,A. Dugand palm classification. We have, in effect, "bureau in Colombia, Brother L6on in Cuba, a sort of of standards" for the O. F. Cook, L. H. Bailey, Miriam Bom- identification, naming, and classifica- hard, and B. E. Dahlgren in the United tion of palms with herbarium specimens Stateswere able to study an increasing as the vouchers or standards.We com- number of palms in the herbarium and pare new material with these to deter- in the field. Burret, in the thirty years mine whether an unidentified palm of his active study, describedabout 550 agreeswith one already describedor is speciesof palms from all warmer parts new to science. of the world. Thus, in 1954, when I The standards are woefully inade- attempted to sift out the duplication quate. A grass,for example,can be pre- among palms described before then, it served in its entirety and comparisons appearedthat there were in the vicinity of whole made against whole' Most of 236 generaof palms known to science palms are so unwieldy that only parts and somewherein the vicinity of 2,650 can ordinarily be preserved.It may be species(as distinguishedfrom names, that material which is sent for identi- 66 PRTNC]PES [Vol.3 fication consistsof parts different from of those then known with one possible "standard" those representedby the or exception. C. lanceolatzs from Grand type-specimenso that direct comparison Comore. The latter, unfortunately, is is impossible.Then identification can known only from some fragments of a at bestbe only tentative. We have only leaf and parts of an inflorescence with a skeletonsystem which rnust be fleshed flowers deposited in the herbarium at out beforepalms are understoodby bot- Paris. Furthermore, Chrysalidocerpus anist, horticulturist, or others in the was not supposed to have red fruit. way that smaller plants are now under- Therefore no comparison could be made stood. then. Perhapsan examplewill help to make The next step was to obtain flowers of clear the inadequacy of present palm the Cabada palm. When these were ex- taxonomy. The Fairchild Tropical Gar- amined, I felt more strongly than ever den has distributed amons its members that the palm was indeed a species of plants of a palm known to some as Chrysalidocarpas. Although I now had "Soledad" Chrysalidocarp&s sp. or to a complete picture of the cultivated palm others as the Cabada palm. Its story is and although, in general, there was con- representativeof the taxonomist's prob- siderable agreement between it and the lems. fragments of the palm from the Como- When I first started visitins the At- res, no definite identification could be kins Carden of Harvard Universityat made. Had we known that the Cabada Soledad,Cuba, N{r. Walsingham,then palm came from Grand Comore, there Superintendent,asked me to identify a would have been basis for a reasonable handsome cluster palm with red fruit assumption that it was Chrysalidocarpus which grew besidethe laboratory. Seed lanceol,atus despite the lack of informa- had come originally from a plant estab- tion on fruit of the latter. But we do not lished in the garden of Dr. Cabada in know from where it came. nearby Cienfuegos. Dr. Cabada had \ow we must somehow obtain a com- been a ship's doctor, if I understand plete picture of the Comores palm, a not correctly, and had apparently brought too easy task. In time a letter to Sovern- the palm from some other part of the ment authorities in Madagascar asking world-but which part no one knew. for assistance in obtaining fruiting ma- In 1952, I photographed the palm, terial of C. lanceolatu.s produced some made notes on its habit, colors, size,and results. I received parts of two palms collectedleaves and fruit, for there were from the Comores. One had fruit but then no flowers. The habit, fruit, shape was immediately identifiable as a spe- and certain other characteristicsof the cies of Rauenea, thus was removed from inflorescenceled me to suspect that it consideration.

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