The Raphia Palms of West Africa

Abstract

Few West African plants are put to better use than the species of Raphia. In places where they grow abundantly, these palms may supply the chief materials for house-building, the framework of the walls and the thatch of the roof. They may be used for making furniture and for poles and staves of all sizes, and they may provide material for mats, baskets, brooms and stout rope. From Raphia trunks may be drawn the common beverage, and the fruits may provide an edible fat, a dressing for the hair, and a means of stupefying fish. The use of Raphia by a primitive tribe to make fire was mentioned by Mary Kingsley (1897). Such being the local importance of the genus, it is the more surprising to find how poorly it is known to science. The account of the genus in the slegional flora by Hutchinson & Dalziel (1936) is headed by the warning that the key to the species is to be regarded as merely tentative, and that much more observation and collecting are necessary for a proper understanding of the species. A German botanist, writing half a century ago, described the taxonomy of Raphia as 'schwierig', that is, awkward or intractable. Awkward indeed the Raphias are from many points of view. Suitable material may be hard to collect, for the palms often grow in water, or in ooze, or in thickets; the trunk may be tall; the leaves among the greatest in the plant kingdom; the infructescence as large as a man can carry. Not surprisingly, herbarium material is often scanty and unrepresentative, and the student is left vainly striving to match one incomplete gathering with another. There has resulted a confusing assortment of published species, some incompletely described and based on inadequate specimens. In its range of West African* material, Kew is not so badly off, possessing in its museum and herbarium the good collection of Raphia made more than a century ago on the coast of Biafra by Gustav Mann, to which has been added more recently some excellent material from Eastern Nigeria