Trachycarpus takil

Trachycarpus takil
File:Takil Rom.jpg
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Monocots
(unranked):	Commelinids
Order:	Arecales
Family:	Arecaceae
Genus:	Trachycarpus
Species:	T. takil
Binomial name
Trachycarpus takil Becc.

Trachycarpus takil, with the common name Kumaon palm, is a fan palm tree that is endemic to the foothills of the Himalaya in southern Asia.

Distribution

The palm tree is native to the Kumaon division of Uttarakhand Province in northwestern India, and into adjacent western Nepal. The palm grows at altitudes of 1,800–2,300 metres (5,900–7,500 ft).

Description

Trachycarpus takil grows to 10–15 metres (33–49 ft) tall, with a rough trunk covered in fiber from the old leaf bases. It is one of the cold hardiest palms to produce a tall trunk, tolerating temperatures down to −14 °C to possibly −20 °C, but with leaf damages or total defoliation.

It is easily distinguishable from Trachycarpus fortunei from its infancy by:

• the young plants having the tendency to growing obliquely.
• the young trunk being distinctly conical
• the adult trunk covered with very tightly clasping (not ruffled) chestnut brown fibers.
• the short, triangular, erect ligulas on the leaf sheaths of the terminal shoot.
• the leaves more spreading and those of the previous year being placed just below the last flowering spadices, reflexed, although still alive, by the leaf blade being irregularly divided only down to about the middle.
• the fruit being more distinctly uniform or considerably broader than high.
• the first leaves of sprouting T. takil seeds are duplicate (having only two ridges differing from T. fortunei with its quadruplicate first leaves.)

Taxonomy

Trachycarpus takil was first discovered by a Major Madden, a British Army colonel with a passion for botany stationed in the Himalayas during the 1840s. Unfortunately, while Madden produced precise descriptions of both the plant and location, he made the fatal mistake of assuming it to be Trachycarpus martianus, failing to realize it was a separate species, thus losing the chance to claim its discovery.

First officially described by the Italian Botanist Odoardo Beccari in 1905 ("Le Palme del Genere Trachycarpus", in Webbia I). The leaves all permanent as in Trachycarpus fortunei. Petioles about as long as the blade. Blade 3/4 orbicular, 1–1.2 m in diameter, irregularly divided down to about the middle into 45–50 segments, 60-85 cm in length from the top of the petiole (hastula) to the apex of the median segments, the latter stiff and erect, not with drooping tips.

Cultivation

Trachycarpus takil is cultivated as an ornamental tree, including use as a cold hardy outdoor palm in colder climates than most palms could survive in.

Some plants in cultivation in the United States under the name Trachycarpus takil may be misnamed specimens of the dwarf form of Trachycarpus fortunei, also known as Trachycarpus wagnerianus.

See also

• Hardy palms