Rare Talipot palm bloom continues in Rio as trees near end of life
The tree can live to 80 years but only blooms once. The rare flowering of Talipot palms is now happening in Rio de Janeiro.
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The Palma de Ceilan tree, or Talipot palm, flowers only once in its lifetime between ages 30 and 80 years old and then dies. (Marcelo Sayao/EPA)
Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The rare flowering of Talipot palms remains visible in Rio de Janeiro in December as several decades-old trees bloom simultaneously for the first and only time at the Aterro do Flamengo and the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden before beginning their final life cycle.
Talipot palms, native to southern India and Sri Lanka, are among the largest palm species in the world. Some specimens grow more than 98 feet high.
Their defining trait is that they flower only once. That event marks the end of their reproductive cycle.
The species reaches maturity between 50 and 70 years. The full flowering process, from the opening of the first flowers to the maturation of the fruit, lasts between 12 and 18 months, a pattern typical of monocarpic plants.
Once the fruit falls, the palms begin an irreversible process of decline that ends in their natural death.
The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden said it has three specimens of Corypha umbraculifera. Two are currently in bloom, while a third has not yet reached flowering age.
At the Aterro do Flamengo, a large urban park designed in the 1960s by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, a larger group of Talipot palms is also flowering.
City officials have not released an updated count, but local media reported that several trees in the park began to flower at the same time, a rare occurrence.
The bloom produces a massive inflorescence with millions of small flowers, considered one of the largest reproductive structures in the plant kingdom.
Researchers at the Botanical Garden said the palms expend all the energy accumulated over decades to complete the process, triggering gradual deterioration.
Brazilian media reported in recent days that the phenomenon remains active, drawing residents and tourists who stop to observe and photograph the towering flowers across different parts of the city.
After flowering, the Botanical Garden will collect seeds to grow new seedlings and preserve the species in its scientific collections and urban parks as part of its conservation policy.
Burle Marx introduced Talipot palms to Rio as part of his vision of integrating native and exotic plants into large-scale urban projects.
The Aterro do Flamengo still preserves part of the original collection planted more than six decades ago.
Environmental authorities are monitoring the stability of the flowering palms. Trees will be removed if they pose a risk to the public while replacements grown from this year's seeds are prepared.
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