Latania lontaroides Seeds | Red Lantan Palm
LATIN NAME: Latania lontaroides
COMMON NAME: Red Lantan Palm
Plant Profile
The red latan is a fan palm from a single island in the Indian Ocean, and it is one of the most striking of the Mascarene endemics. It grows ten to twelve metres with a stout, solitary, grey-brown trunk marked by leaf scars, and a crown of large, stiff, fan-shaped leaves on long petioles.
The colour is the point. Young plants and the new leaves of mature ones carry red petioles and red margins along the leaf segments, fading to blue-green with age, so a young plant is a dramatic red-and-green rosette and an old one is a tall, grey-trunked palm with a crown of blue-green fans. It is dioecious, with separate male and female trees, and the female carries clusters of olive-shaped, greenish-brown fruit that take a year or more to ripen.
Science & Biotechnology
Latania contains three species, each endemic to a different Mascarene island: this one on Réunion, Latania loddigesii on Mauritius and Latania verschaffeltii on Rodrigues. All three are threatened, and the red latan is the rarest, reduced to a small number of wild populations on coastal cliffs and dry slopes where introduced plants and development have taken most of its habitat. It is listed as critically endangered.
The genus is one of the fan palms, and its relationships within that group have been studied with molecular data because the Mascarene flora is a classic case of island radiation and extinction. Seed production in the wild is limited by the separation of the sexes and by the loss of the native frugivores that once moved the fruit, and most remaining recruitment is in managed collections. Botanic gardens hold the largest surviving gene pool, and seed from cultivated trees is the main source for growers.
Uses & Benefits
Red latan is grown as an ornamental in tropical and subtropical gardens and in palm collections, where its red juvenile colouring makes it a specimen for a lawn, a driveway or a large container. It is slow, which suits a courtyard or a conservatory, and it tolerates coastal wind and salt spray better than most fan palms. In cool climates it is a glasshouse plant, and it is worth growing in a pot for the colour of the young leaves alone.
There is no significant economic use. The fruit is not edible, the trunk is not timber, and the leaves are not used for thatch in the way of the coconut or the borassus. Its value is horticultural and conservationist, and the case for growing it is that a plant which survives mainly in collections is helped by every gardener who keeps it in cultivation.
Growing from Seed
Sow fresh seed in a deep pot of gritty, free-draining mix, bury it just below the surface, and keep at twenty-five to thirty degrees with high humidity. Germination is slow and uneven, two to six months is normal, and old seed may take a year.
The seedling sends down a deep radicle first, which is why the pot must be deep, and the first leaf may not appear for weeks after germination. Grow it on in bright, filtered light with steady warmth, water freely in summer and sparingly in winter, and pot on only when the roots fill the container. Plant out in a frost-free site in full sun, in sandy, well-drained soil, with shelter from cold wind.
Our Take
A red-leaved fan palm from one island, critically endangered in the wild and worth growing for that alone. Warmth, deep pots and patience are the whole of the technique.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Red Lantan Palm: