Caulescent, unbranched, dioecious; trunk up to ± 25 m tall with 1 or 2(3) ventricose swellings in upper half, fairly smooth
Leaves palmate; petiole ± as long as lamina, irregularly dentate; hastula irregular, visible from both sides; leaf bases persistent until anthesis
Flowers in axillary pendulous spikes
Male flowers forming branched, swollen spadices, spirally arranged in close-set transverse grooves with up to 10 flowers in each groove; sepals 3, free; petals 3, free; stamens 6, fused below into a tube, free and patent above; ovary 0
Female flowers in simple swollen spadices, few-flowered, with 1 compressed globose flower in each groove; sepals and petals concave, imbricate, short, obtuse; staminodes minute; ovary globose, 3-locular; stigma sessile, minute
Fruit globose, hard, ± 150 mm in diameter, sessile, surrounded basally by accrescent sepals and petals
Seeds 3, ovoid, with fibrous covering
x = 18
Nomenclature:
*Borassus L.
Linnaeus: 1187 (1753)
Dyer: 215 (1952)
Wicht: 39 (1969)
Dransfield: 18 (1986)
Uhl & Dransfield: 222 (1987)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 3-7, Africa to Sri Lanka
Southern Africa: Species 1: *Borassus aethiopum Mart., probably introduced and now naturalised near Leydsdorp, Northern Province
References:
DRANSFIELD, J. 1986. Flora of tropical East Africa. Palmae
DYER, R.A. 1952. A note on the distribution of the palms of South Africa with special reference to Borassus in the Transvaal. South African Journal of Science 48
LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
UHL, N. & DRANSFIELD, J.W. 1987. Genera palmarum. International Palm Society and Allen Press, Lawrence KS
WICHT, H. 1969. The indigenous palms of southern Africa. Timmins, Cape Town
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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