Originally Posted by chong

S-o-o-o-r-r-y! I guess I should take a closer look. Just that in my neck of the woods, I don't see very many of them. Plus, my wife dreads the sawblade like petioles of these plants.

My closest, if not intimate, encounters with palms have only been with the following varieties: cocos nucifera, corypha elata, arenga pinnata, nypa fruticans, phoenix dactylifera, and phoenix roebelenii. The first five of which are food plants, of which in turn, 4 have uses for housing, clothing, and crafts where I come from. The last one is strictly decorative.

I don't know if you know that Corypha Elata is a very large fan palm that lives like the banana, in the, after bearing fruit it dies. The nuts are like huge clusters of grapes, each about the size of a large grape. The shell is tough but easy to crack with a sharp knife. The meat of the nut is white like the coconut and is delicious. Though I guess not as delicious as the pulp of the Phoenix Dactylifera.