Kerriodoxa elegans

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Figure 1. K. elegans

Common Names:

White Elephant Palm
King Thai Palm

Habitat:

An understory palm of coastal rainforests. It is restricted to two localities on slopes in moist forest along the west coast of middle peninsular Thailand from 100-300m elevation.

Description:

A spectacularly attractive, medium sized unarmed fan palm (to about 5 m), with large (to 2 m across) dark green leaves, which are silvery white underneath.

General:

This palm has only recently been introduced to cultivation, but is becoming very popular in the tropics and sub-tropics as a garden and container plant. Because it is dioecious (requiring both male and female plants) the seed is often not available from cultivated plants. For this reason, it has been an expensive item, normally reserved for collectors.

Cultivation:

Likes a shady, sheltered, warm, moist, well drained position, altho it is surprisingly hardy for a palm with such a tropical background, being able to withstand temperatures down to 1° C without any apparent ill effects.

Reference:

Palms Throughout the World, David L. Jones.

Figure 2. K. elegans in habitat, Phuket.

Contributed by:

Greg Smith, (Figure 1)
John Price (Figure 2) (from Palms&Cycads No. 62)

External Links:

Kew, PalmWeb, eMonocot, JSTOR, Trebrown

Google, GoogleImages, Flickr, PalmTalk