Phoenix sylvestris Seeds | Silver Date Palm
LATIN NAME: Phoenix sylvestris
COMMON NAME: Silver Date Palm
Plant Profile
Phoenix sylvestris is the silver date palm, a tall palm of the Indian subcontinent, growing ten to fifteen metres with a crown of arching, grey-green pinnate leaves three metres long. The leaflets are stiff and sharp-tipped, and the trunk carries the diamond pattern of old leaf bases.
It grows in the dry plains of India and Pakistan, often in seasonally flooded ground, and it is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate palms. The fruit is an oblong orange drupe, edible but thin-fleshed and mostly stone. The leaf bases remain on the trunk for years, giving it a rough, cross-hatched surface that is easy to climb.
Science & Biotechnology
The palm is important for its sap rather than its fruit. The growing tip is tapped in winter, and the sugary sap, called toddy or neera, is drunk fresh or boiled down to jaggery, a dark unrefined sugar. A single palm can yield forty to sixty litres of sap in a season, and the tapping wound is renewed daily.
Fresh sap ferments within hours into toddy, which is why the trade is local. The palm is also salt-tolerant and survives both drought and seasonal flooding, adaptations that suit the flood plains where it grows.
Uses & Benefits
Jaggery from the sap is used across South Asia as a sweetener and in sweets. The fruit is eaten by children and by birds, and the seed is sometimes ground as fodder. The leaf is used for thatch and for weaving.
Tapping is skilled and dangerous work, done from a ladder or by climbing with a rope. The palm is also planted as an avenue tree in dry regions. Because the sap ferments so quickly, there is no export trade in neera, and jaggery is the form in which the sugar travels. The trunk is also used for posts and for roof beams in village construction, since the outer wood is hard and takes nails without splitting.
Growing from Seed
Seed germinates in four to eight weeks at 25 to 30°C, and fresh seed is much better than stored. Sow in deep pots, since the palm makes a long radicle before the shoot appears, and handle the seedling by the root ball.
Plants want full sun, deep soil and space: the crown is four metres across and the leaves are armed. They tolerate drought, salinity and seasonal waterlogging, and they are damaged below about minus four. Flowering begins at eight to ten years, and tapping starts when the trunk is a metre or more tall. Male and female palms are needed for seed, though tapping does not depend on the sex of the tree. The sap can also be boiled down at home, though it needs constant stirring to avoid burning at the end.
Our Take
A dryland palm grown for sugar rather than fruit, and one that needs a skilled tapper more than it needs a gardener.
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