Paschalococos disperta, the Rapa Nui palm or Easter Island palm, formerly Jubaea disperta, was the native coccoid Arecaceae species of Easter Island. It disappeared from the pollen core circa AD 1650.
Taxonomy
It is not known whether the species is distinct from
Jubaea, but there is no evidence that it was
Jubaea either, as the soft tissues used for the identification of coccoid genera have not been preserved. All that remain are
pollen from lake beds, hollow
(nuts) found in a cave, and casts of
. Partly to avoid giving credence to the common but speculative assumption that the palms were
Jubaea chilensis and used as rollers to move the
moai statues of Easter Island,
John Dransfield assigned the species to a new genus.
The assignment is not accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, which does not list the genus
Paschalococos,
nor by The Plant List which regards the name as "unresolved".
Usage and extinction
The over-harvesting of wood, as well as the rats brought by human settlers, led to the
extinction of the Rapa Nui palm between 1250 and 1500. Hogan believes loss of the Rapa Nui palm along with other biota contributed to the collapse of society on Easter Island.
[C. Michael Hogan. 2008] Dransfield suggests that the trees became extinct as they were cut down for the edible palm hearts as food supplies ran out due to overpopulation. It is also likely that many palms were cut down to build canoes for fishing. Another possibility is the
Polynesian rat, brought in by settlers arriving between AD 800 and 1000, consumed the nuts of the palm, leaving insufficient numbers to reseed the island.
[[1] LA Times, Easter Island has stone heads, but little else. What happened?, 20 June 2012.]
Despite the extinction of the tree, this palm appears to have been represented two hundred years later in the Rongorongo script of Easter Island with the glyph .
Further reading
