The "A Plant With A Rare Trait" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Leafing through my morning newspaper when I came upon a story titled "New to science, plant with rare trait thrills botanists."  Naturally had to read the half-page story to see what it might be about.  Seems that a new species of palm has been discovered.  And, it flowers underground!  The palm, Pinanga subterranean, is one of 74 plants that scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London named last year as new to science, thrilling some in the botany world.  Evidently the plant is not hard to find since it grows abundantly on Borneo which is the third-latest island in the world and includes parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.  It is also not "new" because local Indigenous groups have known about it for some time.  In that sense, the "discovery" of Pinanga subterranean is an example of conventional science catching up with Indigenous knowledge.  In the case of the palm that flowers underground, the Kew scientists did not learn about it directly from Indigenous groups, but from Paul Chai, a Malaysian scientist from Borneo who had first encountered it about 20 years ago.  In October of 2018, over laksa and tea in the city of Kuchiing, Chai told them about the plant as they were preparing to visit a wildlife sanctuary on an unrelated botanical expedition.  Chai, now 82, had learned that members of a local Indigenous group, the Kenyah, sometimes chewed the fruit of the plant with betel leaves.  The Kenyah are a subgroup of a Borneo Indigenous tribe known as the Dayak whose livelihood revolves around harvesting forest products, including Starwood, a valuable ingredient in perfume.  Dayak people typically learn about plants from their parents, and the forest is so important to them that an Indigenous idiom likens it to breast milk.  When children were going to the forest, their parents would say, "Don't eat that, it can make you sick", or "This can cure fever" or "you can eat that fruit straightaway."  As for Pinanga subterranean, researchers weren't the only scientists to find it.  Indonesian botanist Augusti Randi was learning its local Indigenous names and planting its seeds in his garden on another part of Borneo.  Eventually the Kew scientists, along with Chai, teamed up with Augusti to write a paper about the plant that was published last year in the scientific journal "Palms".  Scott Zona, a botanist in North Carolina and co-deitor of Palms, said Pinanga subterranean was "the palm discovery of 2023, if not the decade."  He added that further research on it could help explain the evolutionary pressures that drive some plants underground.  Agusti, lead author of the study, said he thinks the plant might bloom underground - where there are fewer predators - to protect its flowers.  The only other known plant species that flowers and produces fruit underground belongs to a mysterious genus of orchid in Australia.  So...what do you think?  I never heard of a palm that flowers underground!  Only goes to show....you learn something new every day!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. 

Pinanga subterranean