Malaysia Palm Trees S/S FDC

Malaysia Souvenir Sheet FDC
Name: Palm Trees
Date of Issue: 19 May 2009

Palms are one of the most well-known and extensively cultivated plant families. Most palms are distinguished by their large, evergreen leaves arranged at the top of an unbranched stem. However, many palms are exceptions to this statement, and palms in fact exhibit an enormous diversity in physical characteristics. Palms also inhabit nearly every type of habitat from rainforests to deserts. However, the majority of the species are tropical or subtropical as few palms can tolerate cold weather.

Palms have been important to humans throughout much of history. Many common products and foods are derives from palms. Today, palms are a common feature in botanical gardens or as indoor plants and today, they are widely used in landscaping for their exotic appearance and also due to palms being easy to manage plants.

The types of palm trees featured in the stamps represent merely a small sampling of the vast number of over 400 species of palm trees in Malaysia.

RM3 Souvenir Sheet:
Right: Serdang Endau (Livistona endauensis)
This small to medium-sized solitary palm is only found in the forest of Endau-Rompin, Malaysia. The trunk is erect and slender about 20cm in diameter carries a dense crown of palmate with rather stiff segments of green leaves.

The endemic palm of Endau-Rompin is now planted in many public parks and gardens as a rare collection of palm.

Left: Joey Palm (Johannesteijsmannia altifrons)
This medium-sized stemless solitary palm is a hermaphrodite plant of up to 5-6 metre in height. The leaves are large, entire, diamond shape, 3 metre long and 1 metre wide. The petiol is almost the same length as the leaf and has sharp thorns. Its inflorescence is axillary, and the flowers are white in colour whereas the fruits are globose 3-3.5 cm diameter, corky, very knobbly and are almost black in colour.

Comment: This is the first time that I see a special shape stamp like this.