Wodyetia
Wodyetia is a genus of the palm family Arecaceae, containing the single species Wodyetia bifurcata. The species, commonly known as foxtail palm, is native to a very small area of northeastern Queensland, Australia, but has been widely cultivated around the world.
Description
The foxtail palm is a single-stemmed palm growing to a height of tall and up to diameter. The trunk is light grey, smooth, somewhat bottle- or spindle-shaped, and marked by annular leaf scars. There are about 6–10 fronds in the crown of a mature tree, and they grow to about in length with a petiole about long and a about long. The leaflets are divided into numerous segments, which are arranged radially around the midrib, giving the frond a 'bushy' appearance.This species is monoecious, meaning that individual flowers are either , or , but both types are produced by each plant. Flowers are carried on a panicle that emerges from the base of the crownshaft, it may be up to long. Numerous flowers are clustered together in groups of three, each group with one female and two male flowers. They measure about diameter, and have three yellow-green petals and three green sepals.
The fruit is a drupe up to long and wide, orange-red when ripe. It contains a single large seed coated in a hard but fibrous, black mesocarp.
Taxonomy
The foxtail palm was unknown to botanists and horticulturalists as late 1968, when two employees of the Queensland Department of Forestry found it during a survey of the Melville Range. One of the men, Bernard Hyland, returned to the site seven years later and collected the first specimens of the tree. In 1982 botanist Anthony Kyle Irvine also collected specimens from the area, and he set about describing the plant. He created a new genus, Wodyetia, to accommodate the plant, and his work was published in 1983 in the journal of the International Palm Society, Principes.Wodyetia is placed in the subfamily Arecoideae, tribe Areceae, subtribe Ptychospermatinae. Its nearest relatives include two other monotypic genera that are endemic to Australia, Carpentaria and Normanbya. The latter is very similar to this taxon, and it has been speculated that Wodyetia and Normanbya may be merged into a single genus at some point in the future.
Etymology
The generic name Wodyetia is derived from the name of the last aboriginal man, Wodyeti, with knowledge of the plants in the Cape Melville area. The species epithet bifurcata means 'divided in two', and refers to the divided leaflets of the fronds as well as the forked fibres that surround the seed.Distribution and habitat
This species is endemic to the Cape Melville range, within the Cape Melville National Park in Queensland Australia. The Park is extremely remote and difficult to access. It is about by road north of Cairns, the nearest major population centre, much of that distance is on very challenging unsealed roads.The foxtail palm grows amongst massive granite boulders on southern slopes of the Cape, in vine thickets with adjacent rainforest. They occur on course sandy soils and are the dominant species within their communities. Co-occurring species include Buchanania arborescens, Ficus obliqua, Ficus benjamina, Myristica insipida, and climbers such as Capparis and Cissus species. Near the base of the slopes it grows alongside Eucalyptus polycarpa, Eucalyptus drepanophylla, Bombax ceiba and Cochlospermum gillivraei. The altitudinal range is small, from near sea level to about.
Conservation
After it was described by Irvine in 1982, the foxtail palm became very much in demand for landscaping. Since it only occurred naturally in a very remote location and was subject to protection laws, a thriving black market trade arose, with the actions of illegal collectors threatening to ravage native populations. In 1982 Irvine sent seeds to a few horticulturalists in anticipation of, and an attempt to allay, the demand that would follow the publication of this new species. In 1988, a paper was published which cited a Brisbane-based nursery grower, stating that a single seed was selling in Australia for up to A$5, which equates to about $14 in October 2025. In the decades since then, it has been cultivated widely, both in Queensland and around the world, to the point where it is easily and legally available worldwide., more than 1,500 foxtail palms have been planted in the streets and parks of the far northern Queensland city of Cairns.The International Union for Conservation of Nature last assessed this species in 1998, and gave it a rating of "Lower Risk/conservation dependent". That rating is specified in version 2.3 of the IUCN's rating system, which is now superseded by version 3.1. The IUCN's webpage for the foxtail palm has the annotation 'Needs updating', but does not provide a timeframe for it. In Queensland, where it is native, the species is assessed as near threatened as of 2025 under the Nature Conservation Act 1992. It has not been listed in the Australian Government's Species Profile and Threats Database under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.