Borassus flabellifer L.

A small evergreen palm. It grows to 10-20 m tall. It can be 40 m high. It spreads to 5 m across. The stem is stout and it may be 1 m across. It is often swollen at the base. It has a crown of leaves shaped like the fingers on a hand or spreading out like a fan. There can be 30-40 of the fan like leaves at the crown. The leaves are large with short stout leaf stalks. There can be 80 slender leaflets which are pointed, folded and rich green. Younger trees are covered with dead leaves or leaf bases. Leaves can be 1-2 m across. The flowers occur in flower stalks up to 1.5 m long. The male and female flowers occur in different trees. The females spikes are larger and have a boat shaped spathe. The fruit are borne in bunches like coconuts. The fruit are 10-12.5 cm across and slightly flattened at the ends. They have dark purple skin. Green bracts occur at the base. Each fruit has 3 seeds. The flesh resembles the flesh of a coconut.

A tropical plant. It prefers a well drained soil. It needs a protected sunny position. It is drought and frost tender. Seed need to have a temperature of 24-29°C to grow. Trees need a temperature above 15-18°C. It does better in the drier tropics than in the humid tropics. It grows in seasonally wet and dry areas up to 500 m above sea level. Trees are very sensitive to cold. In Townsville palmetum. It suits hardiness zones 11-12.

The flesh and the water of the fruit are edible. They can be eaten fresh or made into ice-cream. Edible starch can be extracted from the stem. The palm heart is edible. The palm can be tapped for sugary sap. This can be drunk, boiled and concentrated or fermented. The seeds are germinated and the young shoots eaten. The swollen storage leaf is eaten either as flour or boiled and dried. CAUTION: The palm hearts have been shown to be toxic to rats even when cooked.

Plants are grown from seed. Seed take 2-6 months to germinate. Seedlings are difficult to transplant so seed should be sown where they are to grow. To extract the sap, male flower stalks give more sap than female. The unopened flower stalk is tied with a string then banged with a mallet for short times over 3 days before the end being sliced off and the sap collected. A small slither is cut off the end each day to keep the sap flowing.