An international team led by experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew (United Kingdom) has described, studied in depth and awarded a scientific name to the first known palm tree in the world to flower and fruit almost entirely underground, a phenomenon until now only recorded in Rhizanthella orchid.
Pinanga subterranea, the name assigned (for obvious reasons) to this woody plant of the Arecaceae family, inhabits tropical forests in Borneo and is considered "new" to science, although its discoverers admit that, from what they have been able to learn after his study, it is a palm or palm known for a long time by native human communities of this large island in Southeast Asia. In any case, the scientific discovery has been presented as such in an article published in the specialized magazine Palms, with a second informative article in Plants, People, Planet magazine.
P. subterranea has gone largely unnoticed by scientists and now joins the list of about 300 different species of palms in Borneo, and the list of more than 2,500 species of palms known to science worldwide, of which approximately They may be threatened with extinction.
The scientists responsible for the study indicate that it has now been confirmed that P. subterranea can be found scattered throughout the primary rainforests of western Borneo, straddling state borders, from Sarawak in Malaysia to Kalimantan in Indonesia. Prior to its scientific description, the plant was known in at least three Bornean languages under the names Pinang Tanah, Pinang Pipit, Muring Pelandok, and Tudong Pelandok. This palm tree produces bright red fruits underground, which is eaten in some parts of the island.
The researchers emphasize that traditional knowledge in the field of botany and fauna is of great importance in the advancement of science and the protection of the environment.
In fact, explains the Kew Gardens communication service, the researchers responsible for the new study were first alerted to the plant's presence by study co-author Paul Chai, a Malaysian botanist who had already described a species similar, to which he attributed the name of Pinanga chaiana.
Paul Chai first encountered the now-described palm in 1997 during a visit to the Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary, Sarawak. As he pushed aside the thick leaves surrounding a young palm to get a better photo of it, he noticed the fruit that had been dug up.
In 2018, Kew scientists Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, Peter Petoe and William Baker revisited the Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary and collected several palm tree specimens for scientific research.
Dr Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, Future Leader Fellow at RBG Kew, says: “Without the advice of our Malaysian colleague Dr Paul Chai, we would probably have mistaken this exciting new species for an unremarkable palm seedling and passed on. long. Instead, we have scientifically described an incredibly rare case of geobloom, which is subterranean blooming, and the first known example of its kind in the entire palm family. It truly is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”
Independent of the team, Indonesian researcher and lead study author Agusti Randi found a pair of palm specimens in Kalimantan in 2017. At least one appeared to have been dug up by wild pigs, while others appeared to have been eaten or crushed by wild pigs. animals. Researchers from Indonesia, Malaysia and Kew teamed up to scientifically describe this unusual palm tree as a species new to science.
Agusti Randi, National University of Singapore, says: “I first encountered this dwarf palm in 2017 in a forest in West Kalimantan, a group of wild boars were digging in the ground around a population of P. subterranea, and I found several ripe fruits of a striking bright red color lying on the ground. I noticed that much of the soil around the stems of this palm was dug up by wild boars to find the fruit that was underground. Their feces were also scattered in puddles with the seeds contained in them."
At first glance, the species looks like a juvenile plant of other common palms in the Borneo rain forest. Palm seedlings often occupy the forest floor in tropical rainforests and are very difficult to identify, even for the most expert botanist, and consequently tend to be ignored in botanical studies. In this case, however, these apparent seedlings are in fact fully formed adults, with their reproductive parts hidden below the surface.
