Saribus rotundifolius

Saribus rotundifolius, also known as the footstool palm, is a common fan palm found in Southeast Asia. It is a member of the genus Saribus.

It is called anáhaw or luyong in Filipino. In Malay the palm is known as serdang daun bulat.

Saribus rotundifolius was first described as Corypha rotundifolia by the French Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1786. It was moved to the Saribus genus by the German-Dutch botanist Carl Ludwig Blume in a publication issued in 1838 or 1839. This move was generally not accepted by others in the field. In 2011, after DNA research, the reclassification from the Livistona genus to the resurrected genus Saribus was official. The generic epithet Saribus comes from a local name in one of the Maluku languages, as recorded by the Dutch, sariboe. The specific epithet means 'round-leaved' in Latin.

Saribus rotundifolius is a hermaphrodite fan palm. The palm is evergreen, erect, and only grows having a single trunk ('solitary'). It grows at a height ranging from 15 to 25 metres, exceptionally up to 45 metres tall, and thickness of 15 to 25 cm diameter at breast height. Its trunk is smooth and straight with a shallow rings of leaf scars. The trunk is rather massive and tapering. It usually grows to 60 feet (18 m) tall, but may rarely reach 90 feet (27 m) tall. The young trees have a green crown. This species is seldom seen with a slight skirt of drooping, dead leaves. The sheaths are chestnut brown in colour.

The palmately-lobed leaves are spirally arranged around the trunk. The petioles are long. The entire leaf is some 1.2 metres in length. The leaf blade is entire in its centre, and almost round in outline. It is regularly divided to about half of the length and 1.2 metres in diameter. The leaf segments are forked, but not deeply, at their ends. The leaf segments have one main nerve.

The flowers are borne on an inflorescence with a long peduncle, about 0.9 to 1.2 metres long. The three-petalled flowers appear in bunches.

The fruit is a fleshy drupe. It is about 2cm in diameter, quite round, and coloured brick red as it ripens, ultimately becoming black when ripe.

The palm is native to Sulawesi and the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, and the Philippines. The native distribution stretches from Banggi Island in Sabah, Malaysia, off the north-east coastal tip of Borneo in the west, to the Raja Ampat Islands near Maluku off the north-west tip of Bird's Head Peninsula in Indonesia's West Papua province in the east. Its northernmost native distribution is in the Philippines. It is abundant throughout the Philippines. It has been introduced into the wild in Java, the Lesser Sunda islands, Peninsular Malaysia and Trinidad and Tobago. It has also been introduced to India.