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Livistona is a genus of Arecaceae, the botanical family Arecaceae, native to Southeast Asia and East Asia, Australasia, and the Horn of Africa. They are , the leaf with an armed petiole terminating in a rounded, costapalmate fan of numerous leaflets. Flora of China, Vol. 23 Page 147, 蒲葵属 pu kui shu, Livistona R. Brown, Prodr. 267. 1810.
L. speciosa, locally called kho, gives its name to Khao Kho District in Thailand. Palmpedia, Livistona speciosa
In 1983 a species of palm from Somalia was formally transferred to the genus by John Dransfield and Natalie Whitford Uhl.
The Australian members of the genus were subjected to a taxonomic revision by Tony Rodd in 1998. Rodd added five new Australian species, increasing the size of the genus. Another species was described from Vietnam in 2000. In 2009 John Leslie Dowe published the latest monograph on the genus. Along with the Indonesian botanist Johanis P. Mogea and Anders Sánchez Barfod from Denmark, he had described five new species in the previous years, further swelling the genus.
For much of the history of the genus, the species of the genus Saribus were classified within the genus Livistona. Phylogenetic studies using DNA comparisons of numerous species in the different genera in the Trachycarpeae tribe of palms, however, found that the species from the Philippines, New Guinea and other surrounding regions were more closely related to Pholidocarpus, Licuala and Johannesteijsmannia than they were to Livistona, which advocated separating the two groups taxonomically. The genus was thus revised again by Christine D. Bacon and William J. Baker in 2011, with Saribus split off and combined with Pritchardiopsis jeanneneyi, decreasing the genus again.
P. archon is a giant day-flying moth of which the caterpillars known to attack the piths of a number of these palm species, along with many other genera, at least in Europe, where neither the moth nor palms are native. It can kill the palm. It prefers genera of palm with more hairy trunks like Trachycarpus, Trithrinax or Chamaerops.
Etymology
Robert Brown named the genus Livistona after Patrick Murray (1634–1671), Baron of Livingston, a botanist and horticulturist, who was largely responsible for establishing the botanical gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland. Brown's praise for the early horticulturist begins, " … in memoriam viri nobilis Patricii Murray Baronis de Livistone,", and the Latinised name of the genus is evidently derived from the name of the family's seat.
Distribution
The genus has a disjunct distribution, which is split into three contiguous areas. The range of Livistona carinensis in Africa is very far away from that of the other species in the genus. In 1983 John Dransfield and Natalie Whitford Uhl first suggested that this odd pattern was due to a formerly much more extensive distribution during the warmer and moister climate of the Miocene, including areas between it and the rest, but that prehistoric climate change split them. Later DNA evidence of a mass of ancient extinctions between L. carinensis and the rest is thought to corroborate the theory. The recognition of Saribus has split the remaining distribution into a group of species found in Australia and southern New Guinea, and another group of species in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
Species
The classification of the genus has been the subject of a number of recent revisions which have reduced the number of species since the 2009 monograph. As of July 2025, Plants of the World Online accepts 28 species.
Ecology
Livistona species are used as food plants by the of some Lepidoptera species. In Australia, the species Cephrenes trichopepla and C. augiades sperthias have been recorded on a number of different Livistona species. In Asia, Elymnias hypermnestra and likely Gangara thyrsis feed on Livistona. A number of other Lepidoptera which do not naturally occur to the native range of the genus Livistona have been recorded feeding on these palms, including Batrachedra arenosella (recorded on L. subglobosa), Brassolis astyra, Opsiphanes cassina, O. invirae and Paysandisia archon.
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