Henderson - Palms of Southern Asia

Palms of Southern Asia

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ANDREW HENDERSON

THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2009 by the New York Botanical Garden

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 ITW and The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx River Parkway at Fordham Road, Bronx, New York 10458

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henderson, Andrew, 1950

Palms of southern Asia / Andrew Henderson.

p. cm. (Princeton field guides)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-13449-9 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. PalmsSouth AsiaIdentification.

I. Title. II. Series.

QK495.P17H445 2009

584.5095dc22

2008030892

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Cheltenham Light and Gill Sans

Printed on acid- free paper.

nathist.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Flor, Lidia, and Alfred

Palm Regions in Southern Asia

Layout of the Book

Classification of Southern Asian Palms

Morphology of Palms

Key to the Genera of Palms in Southern Asia

1. Areca

2. Arenga

3. Bentinckia

4. Borassodendron

5. Borassus

6. Calamus

7. Caryota

8. Ceratolobus

9. Chuniophoenix

10. Clinostigma

11. Cocos

12. Corypha

13. Cyrtostachys

14. Daemonorops

15. Eleiodoxa

16. Eugeissona

17. Guihaia

18. Hyphaene

19. Iguanura

20. Johannesteijsmannia

21. Kerriodoxa

22. Korthalsia 116

23. Licuala

24. Livistona

25. Loxococcus

26. Maxburretia

27. Myrialepis

28. Nannorrhops

29. Nenga

30. Nypa

31. Oncosperma

32. Orania

33. Phoenix

34. Pholidocarpus

35. Pinanga

36. Plectocomia

37. Plectocomiopsis

38. Rhapis

39. Rhopaloblaste

40. Salacca

41. Satakentia

42. Trachycarpus

43. Wallichia 169

From the deserts of Afghanistan to the limestone hills of southern China and the rain forests of Peninsular Thailand, the natural vegetation of Southern Asia, the area covered by this exciting new book, includes some of the most interesting and unusual palms. For some fortunate areas within the region, taxonomic accounts that include palms are already in existence, but many of these were published in the last century and are already very out of date as far as taxonomy or nomenclature are concerned. Several suffer from the chauvinism of local botany, where apparently distinctive species were described without looking over the border to the next country to see what had already been described from there.

Andrew Henderson provides an amazing synopsis of the entire palm flora of this vast region. Not only does the book account for all names that have been published for palms for this region (and includes several important corrections to long-accepted nomenclature) but it includes many species that have only recently been described, based on the authors collaborative fieldwork with his local counterparts in Asia. Nowhere is this more evident than in Vietnam, where the author has had several trips, uncovering astonishing palm diversity, a diversity hardly imagined a decade ago. The author has reviewed existing literature and has made detailed herbarium studies that have resulted in new synonymy and the uncovering of previously unrecognized species. His lucid account is easily accessible, not just to the experienced botanist.