Unlike its cousin the arecanut palm, the hill areca Bentinckia condapanna is a rare sight. Now, researchers have spotted a population of the threatened wild palms in an abandoned tea plantation in Kollam district.
According to a recent study in the Journal of Threatened Taxa which publishes scientific articles to promote conservation, M. Divin Murukesh of Malappuram’s MES Mampad College and his colleague Ajith Ashokan discovered 76 adult palms and 66 seedlings of the hill areca near a road on the Arundel-Priya estate near Thenmala.
Although the palm is reported to grow in high elevations (between 1,000 and 2,000 metres above mean sea level) in the Western Ghats, the new population has been reported from a lower altitude of around 600 metres.
The team also noticed birds (including the Malabar grey hornbill and Malabar barbet) and mammals (bats and bonnet macaques) feeding on the bright red fruits of the palm.
Road widening threat
The researchers spotted the palms growing on a slanting rock along the Kazhuthurutty-Arundel-Achencoil road which has been proposed for widening.
"If the road is widened, these palms could be in danger," says Mr. Murukesh.
According to them, the discovery could add to the importance of this site, which, along with five other estates in the area, has been proposed to form a potential wildlife corridor along the Aryankavu pass for the use of large fauna, including elephant and tigers.
Locally called condapanna , the hill areca grows only along steep rocky slopes of evergreen forests south of the Palakkad Gap in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
It is categorised as "Vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
"The palms are also rare possibly because they cannot survive without mycorrhizal associations [beneficial fungi on their plant roots]," said Mr. Murukesh.
Plant regeneration from seeds was also very poor, said V.B. Sreekumar of the Department of Forest Botany at Thrissur's Kerala Forest Research Institute. However, with more populations of the plants being discovered, they may not be as rare as previously thought, he said.
"But there are very few studies on the palm since it is very difficult to access the rocky cliffs where they grow. There have been no surveys to assess its current status either," he said.
Kerala's hill areca is one of the only two such species in the world; the other, Bentinckia nicobarica , is seen only on the Nicobar Islands.
