PALMYRA PALM (named from the city of Palmyra in Syria), Borassus flabellifer. A species of palm with a magnificent crown of fan shaped leaves. It oeeurs throughout India and the Archipelago, and in tropical \Vest Africa. The stein attains a height of 20 to 100 feet, and tapers slightly upward. The leaves are about 4 feet long, with spiny-edged stalks of about the same length, each leaf having 70-80 rays. The fruit is somewhat triangular. about the size of a child's bead, having a thick, fibrous, and rather succulent yellowish-brown or glossy black rind, and containing three seeds each as large as a goose's egg. The Palmyra palm is the most common palm of India. growing sponta neously in many districts, cultivated in others, and reaching as far north at latitude 30°. It is one of the most valuable palms known, more than S00 uses having been enumerated for its different parts. It is of slow growth, and the wood near the circumference of the stem in old trees is very hard, black, heavy, durable, sus ceptible to a high polish, and valuable, easily divided in a longitudinal direction, but very difficult to cut across. The Palmyra palm abounds greatly in the north of Ceylon, forming extensive forests; and the timber is exported to the opposite coast of India, being of superior quality to that which is produced there. It
is much used in house-building. The stalks of the leaves are used for making fences, etc. The leaves are used for thatching houses; for making baskets. mats, hats, umbrellas. and large fans; and for writing upon. Their fibres are employed for making twine and small rope. A fine down found at the base of the leafstalks is used for straining liquids and for stanching wounds. The Palmyra palm yields palm wine, arrack, and sugar (jaygery) of India. (See ARRACK.) The fruit is cooked in a great variety of ways. and used for food. The seeds are jelly-like, and palatable when young. A bland fixed oil is ex tracted from the fruit. The young plants, when a few inches high, are esteemed as a culinary vegetable, being boiled and eaten generally with a little of the kernel of the cocoanut; and some times they are dried and pounded into a kind of meal. Multitudes of the inhabitants of the north of Ceylon depend almost entirely on the Palmyra pahn to supply their wants. In the `Palmyra regions' of the southern Deccan vast numbers of the people subsist chiefly on the fruit of this palm.
The Deleb palm, so important to the inhabit ants of Central Africa, formerly considered as a distinct species, is now believed to be the same as the Palmyra palm.