THOOTHUKUDI: In a rare occurrence, a palmyra tree at Gnaniyar Kudiyiruppu in Thoothukudi is found to have both male and female characteristics. Usually, palmyra, a dioecious plant, has either male or female flowers.
While male palmyra trees are called 'aan panai', the female ones are called ‘penn panai’ or 'pennai'. However, the palmyra tree found near Udangudi, which has been a male tree for 70 years, has now produced both male and female inflorescence spadices, a characteristic found only in monoecious plants.
M Thirupathi Venkadesh of the Department of History of MS University, who is researching on the topic 'History of Socio-economic and Cultural Conditions of Palmyra Workers', had identified the tree.
APS Kannan (70), the owner of the palmyra farm, told The New Indian Express that the tree has been producing female and male inflorescence since 2020. The tree yielded a bunch of palmyra fruit in 2020 but it fell down before reaching the maturing stage, he said. While the tree yielded six branches of palm fruits in 2021, a single branch of spadix in 2022 produced over 100 fruits in a bunch looking like a banana fruit heap, said Kannan, a double MA postgraduate.
Dr P Ravichandran of the Plant Science Department of Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, who has been observing the tree for the past year, said last year he and two other scholars found mature, ripe fruits in three female inflorescences along with several male inflorescences in the tree.
"This year, the number of fruits in a single branch of inflorescence was nearly 100. Usually, a single branch of spadix will bear around 15 to 25 fruits, but in this tree, all the flowers in the spadix had fertilised and fruits are finding it difficult to grow in size because of lack of space," Ravichandran said.
Thirupathi Venkadesh said the rare phenomenon of bisexual palmyra trees has been recorded before in HR Pate’s Tirunelveli District Gazetteer, 1917, and Vedhapureeswarer Temple in Cheyyar of Thiruvannamalai district has a miniature stone statue of a palmyra palm ('kal panai') with both male and female spadices.
Ravichandran said he had seen a bisexual palmyra tree at Kumarapuram village of Cuddalore district, and one each in Villupruam and Tirunelveli districts but they are yet to produce fertile flowers and fruits.
A few researchers have also found a bisexual palmyra palm tree at Undeswarapuram near Rajamundry in Andhra Pradesh. Palmyra trees with bisexual features are called 'kalantha panai' or "arthanari panai" referring to the deity Arthanareeswarar, he said.
K Essakimuthu of the Department of Plant Science at MS University, who is doing research in reproductive biology, told The New Indian Express that the seeds of the bisexual palmyra tree in Gnaniyar Kudiyiruppu were fertile and they germinated well during experiments conducted on the university campus.
The development of the endosperm and embryo in the seeds were normal, he said. He attributed the change of the dioecious tree to co-sexual monoecious to genetic modification.