Palm Trees

We were sitting in an open air British/Indian restaurant on Langkawi admiring our surroundings when it struck me how different the Palm trees were.  Just little things really, like the brilliant orange coconuts clinging to them instead of the smooth green ones of Salalah, the yellow ones in Sabak Bernam or the hairy brown ones I was used to buying at the markets in Canada.  

The trees themselves vary.. these are so much scruffier than that very first one my eyes set upon, more than 20 years ago now, inside the LA International airport: the ones I thought were fake. 

There are over 2000 different species of Palm trees: 202 genera, or families: I looked it up.  No wonder they seem different. 

To be considered a palm, they don’t have to be trees: palms come as shrubs or even vines.  Palms are evergreen and they flower and have fruit: single or even double seeded. 

Cocos are the coconut palms that I once thought were ‘palm trees’.  But the Phoenix, Date Palms, were much more prolific in the Middle East, at least around Musannah and Al Sawati, north of Muscat. 

Here in Malaysia we have mile after mile of Eleais Palms: the infamous Palm Oil trees for which this area has sacrificed it’s jungles and air quality.  The British brought in Indian workers who chopped everything down to make way for rubber tree plantations in the 19th and 20th centuries.  In the 1960's, with rubber trees no longer economically viable, the Malaysian department of agriculture paved the way for Palm oil trees to take their place.

Rattan furniture is made from the Rattan Palm. Years ago, this lovely woven, wooden furniture was everywhere in the country, just like the wooden homes that were made during a time when wood was cheaper than the cement and sand constructs that cover the country today.  But the wooden houses are disappearing and you are hard pressed to find a Rattan chair.  If you do, it is expensive and even possibly imported.  Palm Oil is much more economical. 

Daemonorop Palms provide ‘dragon’s blood’: a resin used in varnish, some medicines and dyes.  It is fading out as well, as we introduce other artificial ways to color things. 

In Panama, hats are woven from the Panama Hat Palm.

The Wahingonia Palm is found in California.  

The Philippines are the biggest producers of coconuts, 19,500,000 tonne.  Indonesia is the worlds second largest producer, then India.  Mexico produces just 1,246,400. 

The coconut is not actually a nut at all: It is actually a fruit or a drupe. 

I love the coconut milk curries they have in Thailand and order a green, coconut milk curry.  It is a Thai recipe, probably cooked by a Chinese chef here at my British Indian restaurant in Malaysia.  The Indian waiter points to the tree I have been gazing at, with it’s almost orange coconuts.  He wobbles his head and explains: “These are very cooling for the body” he says. 

Guess he figures I am pretty hot - with my sunburn.. in a menopausal, high humidity, ‘sheesh it’s hot out here’ sort of way. 

More later: Vas wants to go for a walk! I will take my camera.