Arenga pinnata
Sugar palm ( Arenga pinnata ) from Francisco Manuel Blanco: Flora de Filipinas.
The sugar palm ( Arenga pinnata, Syn. Arenga saccharifera Labil ) is common in the humid tropical areas of Malaysia and Indonesia and is now cultivated throughout the Indo-Malayan archipelago.
Description
The trunk reaches heights of 10 to 15 m. He wears a tuft powerful, about 3 m long pinnate leaves. They are monoecious getrenntgeschlechtig ( monoecious ). The female inflorescences grow in the area of fronds, the male below it. The blooms are triple. The male flowers have many stamens. The fruit contains one to three seeds.
The sugar palm tree flourishes like all members of the genus only once in their lives ( hapaxanth ), fertilized and dies thereafter.
Use
The juice from the inflorescences harvested from the 9th year. In the first days 2-7 l can be removed. After about 7 weeks of sap flow decreases. Up to 1800 l can be obtained and processed juice to about 150 kg of sugar per year. Next, the seeds are eaten and processes the petiole fibers ( arenga fibers) to brushes, ropes and mats. Tubes are made from the wood of the tribes. To a lesser extent, Sago is extracted from the plant.
The stone fruits are in the fruit flesh oxalates. Entire immature fruits are first boiled or roasted, so that during further processing, the allergenic potential is reduced shortly. Thereafter, the shell ( exocarp ) is removed, the cooked transparent or seedless fruit meat and watered for several days in order to remove the oxalates. These fruits, laid in syrup, are a popular Naschzeug in Indonesia and the Philippines or be further processed into dessert. In specialty shops conserved young fruits are in syrup under the name Palm fruits on offer. Mature fruits that contain a stone seeds are no longer utilized.
Ripe fruit with core
Young fruits
Palm fruits in syrup
Swell
- H. Brücher: Tropical crops. Origin, evolution and domestication. Springer, Berlin 1977.
- M. Flach, F. Rumawas: Plant yealding non -seed carbohydrates. In: PROSEA. 9, Backhuys Publ, Leiden 1996.
- W. Franke: Crop Science. Thieme, Stuttgart and New York, 1997.