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Palms of New Guinea

Dransfieldia micrantha:  a new monotypic palm genus described recently by a collaboration led from Kew. The species was discovered in 1872, but was not recorded again in the wild for almost 130 years when collaborators from Kew and Universitas Negeri Papua collected it in far west New Guinea. Originally placed in the genus Ptychosperma by Beccari and subsequently moved into two other palm genera, molecular phylogenetic research demonstrated that the species could not be placed in any known genus and required a new genus altogether. Photo: B. Baker.

More than 1,000 species of palm occur in Malesia, making it the most important tropical region for palm diversity. Within this region, there are three palm hotspots – the Sunda Shelf, the Philippines and New Guinea. Of these three, New Guinea is the second largest, but by far the most poorly known, despite being the largest tropical island in the World. With an estimated 270 species in 31 genera, the New Guinea palm flora is rich on a global scale. However, the piecemeal description of species over more than a century and a lack of a critical synthesis has left the taxonomy of the region’s palms in disarray. This is particularly concerning in the light of the importance of palms to local communities and the threats to these resources.

The Palms of New Guinea project is an integrated research and capacity building programme led by RBG Kew. The ultimate goal is to produce a regional monograph following the precedent set by Dransfield and Beentje’s highly regarded Palms of Madagascar (1995). However, due to considerable interest in palms within New Guinea and elsewhere, we have built a broad collaborative consortium of 14 authors, including several from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Through the project, counterparts from New Guinea have made use of training opportunities through research visits to Kew and both collaborative and independent fieldwork. The project is closely linked to other capacity building initiatives (see UK Darwin Initiative Papuan Plant Diversity project). While the manuscript for the full monograph will not be complete until 2007, the project has yielded numerous other outputs including ten study visits to Kew by Indonesian/Papua New Guinean counterparts, more than 700 new specimens deposited in Kew and duplicated elsewhere, 18 scientific papers and a field guide to New Guinea palm genera to be published in English and Indonesian in 2006.

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