Nypa fruticans

Nypa fruticans, commonly known as the nipa palm (or simply nipa, from Malay: nipah) or mangrove palm, is a species of palm native to the coastlines and estuarine habitats of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the only palm considered adapted to the mangrove biome. The genus Nypa and the subfamily Nypoideae are monotypic taxa because this species is their only member.

Unlike most palms, the nipa palm's trunk grows beneath the ground; only the leaves and flower stalk grow upwards above the surface. The leaves extend up to 9 metres (30 feet) in height.

The flowers are a globular inflorescence of female flowers at the tip with catkin-like red or yellow male flowers on the lower branches. The flower produces woody nuts arranged in a globular cluster up to 25 centimetres (10 inches) across on a single stalk. The infructescence can weigh as much as 30 kg (4 st 10 lb).

The fruit is globular made of many seed segments, each seed has a fibrous husk covering the endosperm that allows it to float. The stalk droops as the fruits mature. When they reach that stage, the ripe seeds separate from the ball and float away on the tide, occasionally germinating while still water-borne.

While only one species of Nypa now exists, N. fruticans, with a natural distribution extending from Northern Australia through the Indonesian Archipelago and the Philippine Islands up to China, the genus Nypa once had a nearly global distribution in the Eocene (56–33.4 million years ago).

Fossil mangrove palm pollen from India has been dated to 70 million years ago.

Fossil fruits and seeds of Nypa have been described from the Maastrichtian and Danian sediments of the Dakhla Formation of Bir Abu Minqar, South Western Desert, Egypt.

Fossilized nuts of Nypa dating to the Eocene occur in the sandbeds of Branksome, Dorset, and in London Clay on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, England.