Pinanga badia

Pinanga (pih-NAHN-gah) badia (bah-DEE-ah)
Photo-Malaysian Biological Diversity
Scientific Classification
Genus: Pinanga (pih-NAHN-gah) Species: badia (bah-DEE-ah)
Synonyms
None set.
Native Continent
Asia
Morphology
Habit: Clustering Leaf type: Pinnate
Culture
Survivability index
Common names
None.

Habitat and Distribution

Malaya, and Thailand. Tropical Moist Forest.

Photo-Malaysian Biological Diversity

Description

Clustered understory palm 3 m tall. Stems 2.3 cm in diam., ringed, internodes 10cm long, green with chocolate brown scales. Leaves 6, pinnate, ascending to spreading; sheath 30 cm long, tubular, forming a crownshaft, green with distinctive, pale-centered, chocolate-brown scales 0.3 mm long; petiole 50·90 cm long; rachis 1.8 m long; pinnae 20 on each side of rachis, 38 x 2.5 cm, +/-straight or only slightly falcate, acuminate, regularly inserted, 2-nerved, apical segments truncately praemorse, deeply bifid, lobes 2.5 cm long. Inflorescences 34, infrafoliar, 15·17 cm long; peduncle 3 cm long; prophyll and other bracts not seen; rachillae 3, these 13 cm long, drooping. Flowers in triads of center, later-opening pistillate flanked on each of two sides by earlier-opening staminate, triads close-set, distichously arranged, subtended proximally by a broadly triangular bracteole 1 mm high. Staminate flowers not seen. Pistillate flowers subtended by 2 tooth-like to awl-like, acute bractcoles 1.5 mm high, flowers 2.75 x 3 mm, subglobose; calyx and corolla similar, sepals and petals imbricate to apex, bowl-shaped, broadly rounded; pistil 2.75-3 mm high, ovoid, stigma with 3, thick lobes. Fruits 17 x 8 mm, narrowly ovoid, pinkish. (Henderson, A. 2009) Editing by edric.

Pinanga badia occurs in wet hill forest in southwest peninsular Thailand. It is distinguished from other Pinanga of similar habit, such as P. fractiflexa, P. malaiana, and P. perakensis, by its leaf sheaths with distinctive, chocolate-brown scales and its small, narrow fruits. (Henderson, A. 2009)

Culture

Cold Hardiness Zone: 10b

Comments and Curiosities

Etymology: The epithet is from the Latin badius, meaning chocolate brown, and refers here to the scales of such color on the leaf sheaths.