Juania australis, the Chonta Palm, is a species of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the Arecaceae

Arecaceae

Arecaceae or Palmae , are a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales. There are roughly 202 currently known genera with around 2600 species, most of which are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates...

 family, the only species in the genus Juania. It is a solitary trunked palm tree which is endemic to the Juan Fernández Islands

Juan Fernández Islands

The Juan Fernández Islands are a sparsely inhabited island group reliant on tourism and fishing in the South Pacific Ocean, situated about off the coast of Chile, and is composed of three main volcanic islands; Robinson Crusoe Island, Alejandro Selkirk Island and Santa Clara Island, the first...

 archipielago in the southeast Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 west of Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

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This palm is slow growing and has a green trunk; plants are either male or female. It is threatened by habitat loss. Only one mature tree grows outside its native island habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

. It is on the IUCN Red List

IUCN Red List

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , founded in 1963, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the world's main authority on the conservation status of species...

 of Vulnerable species

Vulnerable species

On 30 January 2010, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species identified 9694 Vulnerable species, subspecies and varieties, stocks and sub-populations.-References:...

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Cultivation
Juania australis is extremely rare in cultivation. Seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s from the Chonta Palm are banned from being exported from the Juan Fernández Islands by the Chilean government, and so are virtually impossible to get hold of. The palm is also extremely hard to grow as it has very particular requirements, preferring cool night temperatures and summer temperatures below 25 °C (77 °F). It is cold tolerant to about -5 C.

It can grow successfully in cultivation for years and then die for no apparent reason. They have been grown successfully in San Francisco, but two specimens were lost during an unusually hot summer. There is a large 4 m (13 ft) specimen at Earlscliffe in Dublin, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, growing well where the climate seems to suit this rare palm tree.