Attalea speciosa

Babassupalme ( Attalea speciosa)

The Babassupalme ( Attalea speciosa) is a South American palm tree, from whose fruits the babassu is obtained.

Features

Attalea speciosa is a single- stemmed palm, which is up to 30 m high and reaches trunk diameter of 20 to 50 cm. The leaves are rounded, the end is often rotated. The petiole is 10 to 40 cm long, the rachis is 5.5 up to 9 m long. She wears hundreds of leaflets, each 20-185 cm long and 1-6 cm wide.

The inflorescences are pendulous and either all-male or hermaphrodite. They reach a length of up to 2 m. In the bud stage they are surrounded by a woody bract. Male inflorescences to 400 side branches, each with 15 to 100 flowers. Hermaphrodite inflorescences have more side branches, each carrying one or two (rarely three) and female flowers one to several male flowers, which are often not fully develop.

The fruit is an oblong drupe 6-13 cm long and 4-10 cm wide. The exocarp is fibrous, the mealy mesocarp, endocarp is hard, woody and up to 2 cm thick. The fruits weigh up to 250 g Inside there are three to six seeds 3-6 cm in length. You have an oily, white endosperm.

Dissemination and locations

The Babassupalme is native to the southern area of the Amazon Basin from the Atlantic to Bolivia and extends north through the eastern and central Amazon to Guyana and Suriname. Most stocks are often located south of the Amazon. In Maranhão and Piaui there babassu stocks with up to 10,000 palm trees per hectare. These are mainly young plants particularly easy to settle on disturbed sites. This so-called babassu zone covers around 150,000 km ² in the southeast of the Amazon, often at the transition from forest to savannah.

With regard to the site conditions, the Babassupalme is relatively undemanding. They usually grow on good soils with high rainfall. It also occurs in drier areas, but here rather along the rivers. Floods, they can not tolerate, however. To be optimal for the growth are 1500-2500 mm annual rainfall.

Use

Babassupalmen be less cultivated in plantations, but it promotes and benefits from the natural resources. Young, dense stands are thereby thinned by harvesting of palm hearts, since it die the palms. Older and purely male palms are also eliminated.

In the Brazilian states of Piauí, Maranhão, Tocantins and Bahia, the idea of ​​" Terra babaçu livre " was created (Free babaçu country) of babassu collectors who wanted to ensure the sustainable use of palm. They fought for freedom of access to babaçu areas, which was first granted them by municipal laws, have now expanded by federal regulations.

Taxonomy

The Babassupalme is now run under the name Attalea speciosa .. A commonly used synonym is Orbignya speciosa, however, there are numerous other synonyms.

Documents

• J. Janick, RE Paull: The Encyclopedia of Fruit & Nuts. Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 9,780,851,996,387th pp. 92f.