Tall palm trees are often associated with Hollywood Boulevard and tropical resorts, but not all palm trees share the same characteristics. A newly discovered palm species, Pinanga basement, stands out for its unique feature of having both flowers and fruits grow completely underground.
“I immediately realized that this was a really strange palm,” says Benedict Kuhnhäuser, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Richmond, England.
Botanist Paul Chai first came across this palm in the late 1990s in the Ranjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary in Borneo, Malaysia. Unfortunately, Chai lost all his photos of the plant during subsequent floods.
In 2018, during a visit to Borneo, Chai shared the story of the underground palm with Kuhnhäuser and other botanists. Intrigued, the team headed to the sanctuary and were surprised to find that this unique palm was abundant there.
It is quite rare for plants to have both flowers and fruits underground. However, exceptions exist in the plant kingdom. For example, the Bornean pitcher plant buries its traps under the soil, and there are other species with underground flowers or fruits. But the Pinanga basement stands out as one of the very few plants that have both buried.
Unknown to science, but well-known to humans.
Although many botanists were introduced to the unique palm species only recently, local people, especially indigenous communities, were already familiar with it. They had their own names for these palm trees and often dug up the buried fruit to eat as a snack. This highlights the importance of collaboration with indigenous peoples and incorporating their knowledge into scientific research.
The ecology of the Pinanga basement is a puzzle. While most plants need pollinators and seed dispersers for reproduction, it’s unclear how this underground palm accomplishes this. Self-pollination and potential interactions with beetles and wild pigs are among the speculations.
Kuhnhauser, along with collaborator Sidney Bello, is currently studying the evolution of this palm’s subterranean lifestyle. Given that many of its relatives also live close to the soil, the transition to a fully underground existence may not have been such a drastic leap in evolution.
Source: www.snexplores.org
