Wagner, Warren L., Derral R. Herbst and S. H. Sohmer. 1999. Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai

 

Distribution
In the Hawaiian Islands, endemic to Moloka`i, Maui.

Habitat
Dry to moist forest

Elevation
600-1,000 m

Habit
Palms ca. 4-5 m tall; trunk ca. 20 cm in diameter.

Leaves
Leaf blades ca. 88 cm long from ligule to apex, upper surface pale green and glabrous, lower surface with scattered small, elongate-elliptic, entire, hyaline lepidia, leaf segments with long, very acuminate drooping points with long filaments between them, petioles ca. 85 cm long, lower surface densely ephemerally brown tomentose, upper surface sparsely silvery white tomentose, becoming glabrate, lower costae of blade with broad, long, silky, pale brown, translucent palea on lower surface.

Flowers
Inflorescences ca. 52 cm long, shorter than petioles, panicles 10-13 cm long, of a few 2-partite branches in its lower part and of simple floriferous branchlets elsewhere; rachillae erect or vermiformly twisted and covered throughout with a dirty grayish brown tomentum, somewhat angular and marked with conspicuously spirally alternate notches for the insertion of the flowers; prophyll and peduncular bracts glabrate, but with a grayish ephemeral scattered wool toward apex.

Fruit
Fruit black, glossy, subglobose, 2-2.2 cm in diameter.