Wodyetia bifurcata.
In Family Arecaceae the Foxtail Palm is the only species in the Wodyetia genus.
It is native to a small area in northern Queensland.
It is now seen in parks, road sides and large public spaces in the tropics and subtropics.
They are a solitary palm with a stem up to 10 or 15 m high and mostly 25 cm across.
The stem is slightly swollen at the base and in the middle.
The bark is pale grey and on older palms can be dark grey.
In sunlight it often looks a reddish-brown.
(Some books and websites say pale grey but show palms with red-brown stems.)
The stem is smooth with regular faint leaf scars close at the top and slightly wider apart lower down.
The dense arching pinnate leaves, up to 3 m long are all in the crown.
The petiole, 30 to 40 cm long and the midrib have brown and off-white scales.
Scales are peltate (the stalk is attached off centre) and have incised edges.
The petiole bases extend down the stem forming a 1 m high crown shaft.
The pale green tubular sheath has pale grey to white scales.
The leaf rachis or midrib is covered in similar grey or brown scales.
New leaves have only a few leaflets (primary pinnae) along each side of the midrib.
Leaflets have a narrow base, a wide oblique or straight ragged (erose) end and sometimes a bristle-like extension.
Young leaves are densely covered in scales.
Older leaves have more pinnae that are split lengthwise into narrower wedge-shaped or linear segments.
Adult leaves have up to around 100 primary leaflets (pinnae) on each side of the midrib.
Leaflets are up to 70 cm long in the middle of the leaf and half that at the ends.
Both ends of adult leaves may have pinnae that are undivided.
Leaflets in the centre of the blade have up to 17 linear or wedge-shaped segments.
The side and marginal veins are prominent.
The upper leaflet surface is a shiny pale green while the lower has a whitish coating.
The segments of each leaflet are attached to the midrib in a semi-circle or ‘C’ shape.
From this base the segments extend out in all directions around the midrib.
This is what gives the leaves their bushy Foxtail appearance (plumose).
(Roystonia regia the Royal palm and Syagrus romanzoffiana the Queen palm have leaflets in several planes but without erose tips.)
Other palms with pinnate leaves commonly seen in Brisbane have the leaflets in 1 plane or a ‘V’.
Pendulous inflorescences, 1 m long are branched up to 4 times near the base but less at the tip.
The thick peduncle, around 10 to 12 cm long has a number of bracts.
At the base is the over 50 cm long tubular prophyll (first bract) that later splits.
On the base of the primary branches are up to 5 bracts.
The first of these is as long as the prophyll but the others are only 1 cm or less.
They all fall off older inflorescences.
Bracts at the base of the lower order branches are only a few mms long.
Branches have close groups of 3 unisexual flowers with a central female between the males.
Male flowers have 5 mm long sepals and 10 mm petals all greenish to cream.
There are around 60 pale yellow stamens and a normal looking ovary and style but there is no ovule (a pistillode).
Female flowers have 6 mm green sepals and 10 mm cream petals.
The ovary has 3 spreading stigmas and there are 6 small staminodes.
Male flowers open widely exposing the stamens while females barely open at all.
Males fall before the females open.
The fruit are a drupe 5 to 6 cm long including the calyx and stigma.
Drupes mature from green to orange then red.
Around the single 3 cm long seed is a 3 mm layer of bundles of dark fibres that split and rejoin.
J.F.
