Calamus Caryotoides

''Calamus caryotoides'', commonly known as fish-tail lawyer cane, is a climbing palm native to Queensland, Australia. Its habitat is rainforest and monsoon forest.

Description

''Calamus caryotoides'' has a slender, flexible stem up to diameter and long. Older parts of the stem, where the leaves have fallen, are green and smooth. The leaf sheathes measure about long and are covered in numerous dark spines up to long. A barbed tendril emerges from the leaf sheath on the opposite side to the petiole. The leaves are about long and compound, i.e. they are divided into leaflets, and both the rachis and leaflets carry small barbs. The leaflets are about long and wide at the distal end, but quite narrow at the junction with the rachis. The distal end is praemorse, i.e. shaped like a fish tail.

The inflorescence is pendulous, branched, and up to long, and each carries either male or female flowers. The fruit is small and round, about in diameter. The outer covering consists of numerous scales that slightly overlap each other, in the manner of a snake skin. A small amount of soft pulp lies beneath, surrounding the single globose seed which measures about diameter.

Taxonomy

This species first became known to Western science in 1770, when a non-flowering specimen was collected by Joseph Banks during the first voyage of James Cook. In 1820 a fertile specimen was collected and eventually described by the English botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham, however his description was invalidly published, and so it wasn't until 1850 that a formal, valid description was published by the German botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in volume three of his book ''Historia naturalis palmarum''.

Distribution and habitat

The fish-tail lawyer cane is found from near the top of Cape York Peninsula, southwards along the coastal regions to about Mount Elliott near Townsville. It grows in rainforest, gallery forest, and drier forest types, at altitudes from near sea level to about .

Traditional uses

The Kuku Yalanji people of the Mossman area used this plant mainly for basket weaving. The Cairns Botanical Gardens records that the Yidinydji, Yirrganyydji, Djabuganydji, and Gungganyji use this plant as follows:

''The thin flexible trunks of this (and other) climbing palm made ideal building frames, or rope and string when split. The young shoots were eaten to cure headaches.''

It is known to Yidinydji as Bugul, pronounced BOOK-KOOL.

Gallery

File:Calamus caryotoides 175094171.jpg, Spines on the leaf sheath
File:Calamus caryotoides 227304998.jpg, The compound leaf
File:Calamus-caryotoides-SF24214-02.jpg, Top of the leaf sheath, with petiole (L) and tendril (R). Note, this stem is hanging upside down.
File:Calamus-caryotoides-SF24214-01.jpg, Rachis and leaflet bases with barbs
File:Calamus-caryotoides-SF22283-01.jpg, Flower buds and immature fruit

References

External links

View a map
of herbarium collections of this species at the Australasian Virtual Herbarium

View observations
of this species on iNaturalist

See images
of this species on Flickriver.com

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5018496

caryotoides
Plants described in 1853
Endemic flora of Queensland
Taxa named by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius