Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The species present range from the famous to the recently discovered, from dwarf to gi-
ant, and almost all have intriguing characteristics. One palm has led to a Malagasy word
entering the English language - the
raffiapalm
(
Raphia ruffia
). The fibres from its leaves
are woven into hats, baskets and mats. Of the 50 new palm species discovered in the last
decade, one is worth particular attention:
Ravenea musicalis
, the world's only water palm.
It starts life underwater in only one of Madagascar's southeastern rivers. As it grows, it
surfaces, eventually bears fruit, and then seeds. Its discoverer named it
R. musicalis
after
being charmed by the chimes of its seedpods as they hit the water below. There are other
riverside palms in Madagascar adapted to tolerate the recurrent floods of the island's low-
land rainforest, but none as perfectly as the musical water palm.
Another unusual group is the
litter-trapping palms
. The crown of their leaves is ar-
ranged like an upturned shuttlecock, sprouting at first from the forest floor, and then gain-
ing height as the stem grows from below. Its watertight crown catches leaves falling from
the canopy, perhaps to obtain trace minerals, but no one knows for sure. A strange conse-
quence of this growth is that the roots of other plants, which originally grew through the
soil into the crown by mistake, later dangle down from its heights as alabaster-white zig-
zags.
Although the vast majority of palms live among the hardwoods of the lowland rain-
forests, there are species which brave the more arid environments, notably the
feather
palms
(
Chrysalidocarpus
spp)whichnestleinthecanyonsofIsaloNationalParkandstand
alone amongst the secondary grasslands of the west.
Looking like a messy cross between a palm and a pine tree,
pandan palms
or screw
pines (
Pandanus
spp) are different from those above, but equally fond of Madagascar.
Their foliage consists of untidy grass-like mops which awkwardly adorn rough branches
periodically emerging from their straight trunks. Common in both rainforests and dry
forests there are 75 species, only one of which is found elsewhere, placing the country
alongside Borneo in the pandan diversity stakes.
Note:
The word palm is often used rather liberally. The
traveller's palm
(
Ravenala
madagascariensis
), symbolic of Madagascar, is not a palm at all (see
Trees
overleaf). In
fact it is in the same family as the bird of paradise flower (Strelitziaceae). A second 'false
palm' is the
Madagascar palm,
which is actually a spiny succulent
Pachypodium lamerei
(see
Click Here
).
TAVY
Jamie Spencer
Slash-and-burn farming,
tavy
in Malagasy, is blamed for the permanent destruction of
the rainforest. Even those practising
tavy
agree with this. They also respect the forest
