OIL PALM, Elceis, a genus of palms, of the same tribe with the cocoa-nut palm. The best known species, the oil palm of tropical Africa, sometimes attains a height of 60 to 80 feet. The sterns arc thickest in the middle, tapering chiefly upwards. The leaves are pinnate, their footstalks spiny. The flowers have a strong peculiar smell, like that of anise or chervil. The fruit forms an immense head, like a great pine-apple, consist Mg of a great number of bright orange-colored drupes, having a thin skin, an oily pulp, and a had stone. The pulp of the drupes, forming about three-fourths of their whole bulk, yields, by bruising and boiling, an oil, which when fresh has a pleasant odor of violets, and when removed into colder regions acquires the consistencv of butter. This oil is now very largely imported from tropical Africa into Britain. and is much used for many purposes, as for making candles, toilet soaps, etc., and for lubricating machinery
and the wheels of railway carriages. When fresh, it is eaten like butter. See OiLs. The nut was formerly rejected as useless after the oil had been obtained from the fruit; but its kerlIO Nth Oil is now textracted,•clilled7PAL:qvu1 Om; which is clear and limpid, and has become to some extent an article of commerce. The oil palm abounds in mangrove swamps, but is also a conspicuous feature of the land scape on sandy coasts in the tropical parts of western Africa. It yields from its trunk abundance of a pleasant and harmless beverage, which, however, becomes intoxicating in a few hours, called mulora in Angola, and much used there as an alcoholic stimulant. The unripe nuts of the oil palm are used in some parts of Africa for making an excel lent kind of soup. The oil palm has been introduced into some parts of America, and is now abundant in them.