Scientific Name : Phoenix loureiroi Kunth.
Common Name : Spiny Date Palm, Mountain Date Palm, Formosan Date Palm
Chinese Name : 刺葵, 臺灣海棗
Family : ARECACEAE
Local distribution status : Native species
| Origins | Southeast China and other Southeast Asian and South Asia countries, e.g. Laos, Pakistan, the Philippines. |
|---|---|
| Meanings of names | The specific epithet loureiroi is in honour of João de Loureiro (1717-1791), who was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary and botanist. |
| Ecology | Spiny Date Palm is prone to grow in grasslands, woodlands and coastal areas, usually below 1700 m above sea level. To acclimatise the environments, it has evolved superior tolerances to full sunlight, drought, dampness, wind and moderate salinity. Its male flowers are beloved by beetles. Its fruits serve as a delicacy for a wide range of birds and animals. |
| Application | Before the prevalence of plastic brooms, people always used the old leaves as brooms, known as ‘Kang-lang broom’ and ‘糠榔帚’ in Chinese. In the Philippines, its juvenile leaves are always dried and woven into raincoats. Its fruits can be eaten fresh and are anticancer and antioxidant. |
| Phoenix spp. in Hong Kong： |
Phoenix spp. are widely grown in Hong Kong for multiple ornamental purposes but are often confused with their comparable names and morphologies. For example, P. hanceana (Formosan Date Palm) is sometimes considered as a distinct species from Spiny Date Palm, but taxonomists prefers to lump them into a species and treat the former as a synonym of P. loureiroi. Notably, most of the palms in Hong Kong are mistakenly labelled as P. hanceana and should be P. sylvestris (Wild Date Palm) instead. To distinguish two palms we mentioned, Spiny Date Palm is always small while Wild Date Palm is stiff and towering. The stem of Spiny Date Palm is dark brown and covered with dense persistent petiole bases, while the one of Wild Date Palm is grey and covered with scatter persistent petiole bases. The leaves of Spiny Date Palm are green, while those of Wild Date Palm are blue green. Spiny Date Palm is the only native Phoenix. sp. in Hong Kong and is widely distributed in open forests. Unlike the one that you can see in urban parks, the wild Spiny Date Palm is always bush-like with or without a short stem. |
| Growing habit | Main stem solitary palm. |
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| Height | To 5 m. |
| Stem | Stem dark brown, internodes very short, with persistent diamond-shaped petiole base. |
| Leaves | Pinnate, to 2 m, pinnae 40-130 per side of rachis, solitary or 2-3 arranged in different planes. Pinnae linear, pinnae at the base modified, spiny. |
| Flowers | Dioecious. Inflorescences erect, branched, prophyll yellowish green, flowers yellowish white. Male flowers petals 3, stamens 6. Female flowers ovoid. |
| Fruits | Fruit long ellipsoid, orange to black or purplish black when ripe. |
| Flowering period | April to May in Hong Kong. |
| Fruiting period | June to October in Hong Kong. |
Scientific name above is based on Hong Kong Herbarium website :
https://www.herbarium.gov.hk/en/hk-plant-database/plant-detail/index.html?pType=species&oID=3166
Scientific names from other databases :
― Flora of China : Phoenix loureiroi Kunth
― Plants of the World Online : Phoenix loureiroi Kunth