Palmyra - the "celestial tree"

Palmyra palm is a bless from God, it is such a "celestial tree" that all parts of its can be used. It is a kind of very tall tree, can reach a height of 30 meter. The leaves are long, fan shaped, 2-3 m long. The fruits are 10-18 cm in diameter, borne in clusters and have a black husk.

There are three to four seeds (sometimes one or two seeds) inside the fruit. The seeds of the raw fruit are edible. After cutting the top portion of the fruit the sweet jelly sockets reveal with a thin, yellowish-brown skin. These are known to contain watery fluid inside the fleshy translucent pale-white body with a mild flavour. Sometimes when the outer casing is still unripe yet the seeds are eaten as the fruit.

Continue with the soft orange-yellow mesocarp (the state between endocarp and exocarp) pulp of the ripe fruit which is sugary, though the Borassus (a genus of species of fan palms which contains flabelliferrins) is little bitter in taste, dense and edible, rich in vitamin A and C. The yellow pulp of the ripe fruit is covered with a thin blackish purple skin and the more ripe fruit get more darker outer skin.

Not only the fruit or the seed the sap of the male tree is also edible and it has a mild sugary taste. Though after fermentation it becomes sour. The sugary juice or the palm sap is concentrated to a crude sugar which also edible and very common sweet to Bengali, Tamil and Indonesian.

As all parts of the tree is important, the steam is usually use as wood and for making small boats. And the leaves is use hugely in rural area for making handy crafts such as fan, basket, box, mat etc.

In different places palmyra known differently as it is native to various country such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia and so on, it has a certain collection of names - doub palm, palmyra palm, tala palm, toddy palm, wine palm, or ice apple.