Sugar Palm, Enau, Kabong
Description
Solitary feather-leafed palm growing to 15 m with diameter c. 60 cm. Trunk covered with persistent leaf bases with black fibres. Fronds are c. 9 m long and petioles 1.8 m long; stiffy and erect, the leaflets irregularly spaced and arranged in several planes. Flowering at the axils of the trunk from the apex downwards in an extended flowering and fruiting event and eventually dies (hapaxanthic). The brunched inflorescences are over 2 m long bearing purplish flowers. Fruits subglobose, wider than long, greenish yellow, 5-8 cm long.
Ecology
Often cultivated and in secondary forest at border of primary lowland rainforests.
Distribution
Origin not clearly known but likely from rainforest of western Indonesia.
Uses
It has long been in cultivation, the young inflorescence being tapped for palm sugar, syrup and alcoholic beverages. Fibres from the leaf sheath have been used as thatch roofing and making ropes. Sagu can be extracted from the stem, the crown heart is edible. Fruits are poisonous, but the immature cooked endosperms are sugared and eaten as dessert.