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At long last, the northern relatives of the Bangalow or Piccabeen have been officially named by John Dowe and Donald Hodel (1994 Austrobaileya 4:227-244). John is in charge of the City Council-run Palmetum (a magnificent collection) in Townsville, and author of a book and numerous scientific articles on palms of the Pacific Islands. Donald is author of a recent book on the central American palm genus Chamaedorea, and lives in California with an annual sojourn to his Tahitian mother-in-law.

All Archontophoenix are moderate to large, single-stemmed, pinnate-leaved (feather), monoecious Arecoid palms, endemic to eastern Australia. Dowe and Hodel have added four species to the well-known Piccabeen (A. cunninghamiana) and Alexandra (A. alexandrae) palms, and retained the bulbous-lower-trunked var. beatriceae (Mt. Elliot) as a variety of A. alexandrae.

Of the four new species, one, A. tuckeri, is widespread in lowland and highland areas in a 450 km range from Cape York to the McIlwraith Range. It was previously known as A. sp. Peach River or Rocky River. These rivers flow on the inland and coastal sides of the McIlwraith Range respectively.

The other three species are relatively rare and not widespread, particularly A. myolensis and A. maxima. A. myolensis occurs in lowland forest near Myola, 5 km north-west of Kuranda, with less than 100 mature trees known, and has an endangered conservation status. A. maxima is common in the upper reaches of the Walsh River and the Mt. Haig Range of the western Atherton Tableland, but the area is not large. A. purpurea has been well known in cultivation in Queensland for some time as A. sp. Mt. Lewis, and is confined to the higher granitic massifs of Mt. Lewis, Mt. Spurgeon and Mt. Finnigan, where it is locally abundant.

Dowe and Hodel list keys based on either floral/fruit or vegetative characteristics. A. purpurea has a purplish crown shaft, the thickest trunk (45cm diameter at breast height versus 30cm or less for the others), and the largest seed. A. tuckeri has small leaves, fruit nearly as large as A. purpurea and a lime-green crown shaft on mature plants. A. myolensis has a blue-green crown shaft, lax, pendulous pinnae like A. cunninghamiana, and fruit with sub-apical stigmatic remains (all other species have apical). A. maxima is named after its larger inflorescence than other Archontophoenix species. It also differs in that its leaves are ascending and rigid and, if a petiole is present, it is flat or shallowly concave near the trunk, rather than deeply or moderately concave like other Archontophoenix species.

Seedlings of all species grow easily, but resent dryness. All have a frost susceptibility similar to that of A. alexandrae (regrettably, this I can vouch for.)

Finally, a few statistics: