Caryota urens Seeds | Toddy Palm
LATIN NAME: Caryota urens
COMMON NAME: Toddy Palm, Jaggery Palm
Plant Profile
Caryota urens is the fishtail palm, a single-stemmed tree of the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia that grows to twenty metres with a trunk thirty centimetres thick. The leaves are the largest of any palm in the region, three to four metres long and twice divided, with leaflets that are jagged at the tip and look, from a distance, like the tail of a fish.
It grows in moist valleys and along streams from India through Myanmar to Malaysia, and it is planted around villages for its sap. The fruit is a round berry that turns red then black, and the seed inside is a source of irritation rather than food, since the flesh contains needle-shaped crystals of calcium oxalate.
Science & Biotechnology
The palm is hapaxanthic: it flowers once, producing successive inflorescences from the top of the trunk downward over several years, and then dies. That habit is rare among palms and it means the tree has no second chance; all the stored carbohydrate goes into one reproductive effort, and the trunk is left standing dead for a year or two before it falls.
The sap is the commercial product. The inflorescence stalk is tapped before the flowers open, and the sugary exudate is collected twice a day. Fresh, it is a mild, slightly smoky drink; within a few hours, wild yeasts turn it into toddy, and boiling it down gives jaggery, a dark sugar with a strong molasses flavour.
Uses & Benefits
Jaggery from fishtail palm is used in sweets and in fermented rice cakes across southern India and Sri Lanka, and the sap is also distilled. The young leaf is used for thatch, and the fibre from the leaf base is twisted into rope. The pith of the trunk is eaten in some regions, though the tree must be felled to get it.
The fruit should not be handled carelessly. The calcium oxalate crystals cause intense irritation to skin and eyes, and eating the raw fruit burns the mouth. The seed is used in local medicine after processing, and the sap, being rich in sugar, ferments quickly and should be drunk or boiled the same day.
Growing from Seed
Seed germinates in two to four months at 25 to 30°C and should be sown fresh, since it loses viability within a few months. Sow in a deep pot, because the radicle grows down before the shoot lifts, and keep the mix warm and moist but not wet.
Plants want a frost-free climate, rich soil and steady moisture, and they grow quickly once established, putting up a metre or more of trunk a year. The palm is not self-cleaning and the dead leaves hang for years, which is either character or a nuisance. Flowering begins at fifteen to twenty years, and after that the tree is living on borrowed time.
Our Take
A palm grown for sugar and thatch rather than for a garden, and one that dies as soon as it has finished flowering, so replacements must be raised in advance.
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