Caryota urens

Botanical Name – Caryota urens

Common Name – Sritalah (Sanskrit), Madi, Bankhajur (Hindi), Bherli maad (Marathi) Bainemara (Kannada), Anappana (Malayalam), Shivjata (Gujarati), Sao gosh (Assamese)

Distribution – Delhi, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala

Habit

• Large evergreen palm
• Fast growing
  
  
  

Habitat

• Grows naturally in moist, semi evergreen and evergreen forests of India
  
  
  

Specific properties

• A monocarpic species: living for several years but dying once it has flowered
• It attains full size in about 10 – 15 years, and then flowers for another 5 years. It flowers from the top down, and once the last fruit on the bottom inflorescence matures, the plant dies
  
  

Ecology

• Bats feed on fruits and prefer tree for roosting
• Palm civet, birds feed on its fruits
• Bees visit the flowers as pollinators
• Larval host plant of Giant Redeye, Oriental Palm Bob, Small Palm Bob, Tailed Palmfly, Common Palmfly
• Elephants feed on leaves and pulp of this plant
  
  
  

Uses

• Sap is used to make sugar. alcoholic beverages and jaggery
• The young unfolding leaves and leaf bud are cooked and eaten as vegetable
• The root is used for treating tooth ailments
• Tender flowers are used for promoting hair growth
• Leaf fibre is used to make brooms, brushes, ropes, baskets etc
• Leaf scurf is used in machine brushes for polishing linen and cotton yarns
• Leaves are used for food packaging and thatching
• The root bark and the cabbage of the palm are used for the treatment of rheumatics, welling’s and snake-bite poisoning
  
  

Propagation

• Seeds