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Classification
Salacca
Nomenclature
SUMMARY
Moderate-sized clustering, pleonanthic or hapaxanthic dioecious palms. Stem subterranean, decumbent or shortly erect, internodes short, usually obscured by the persistent leaf bases. Leaves pinnate; leaf sheath and petiole elongate, open, not forming a crownshaft, armed with flattened spines, arranged in rows or whorls; leaflet single-fold, except for the terminal pair which is usually joined, linear or sigmoid in outline, equally spaced and oriented in one plane or grouped and pointing in different directions, acuminate. Inflorescence axillary and emerging though a groove along the abaxial surface of the leaf base or inflorescences terminal and subtended by reduced leaves sometimes spicate, male inflorescences usually branched to 1 more order than female; peduncle short; prophyll rather inconspicuous, partly enclosed within the leaf sheath slit. Male flowers borne in dyads, sunken in pits, exerted at anthesis; calyx tubular, 3-lobed; corolla often with a short stalk-like base, and a long proximal tube, bearing 3 triangular, valvate lobes; stamens 6, borne at the mouth of corolla tube, filament short, anthers rounded to elongate. Female flowers either solitary or coupled with a sterile male flower in dyads, gynoecium tri-carpellate, tri-ovulate, covered with flattened scales, stigmas 3. Fruit (1–)3-seeded, globose to pear-shaped or ellipsoidal, with apical stigmatic remains; epicarp covered in somewhat irregular vertical rows of reflexed scales, the scale tips spinelike and upward pointing, mesocarp thin at maturity, endocarp not differentiated. Seed with thick sarcotesta, endosperm homogeneous, the apex with a pit. Germination adjacent ligular; eophyll entire, bifid.
Twenty species in India (Assam) to S China and W Malesia. Four species in Thailand.