Borassus aethiopum

Description

The typical form of Borassus aethiopum is a solitary palm to 25 metres (82 feet) in height and 1 m (3.3 ft) in diameter at the base. In the river bottoms (floodplains) of many East African rivers (the Rufiji in Tanzania and the Tana in Kenya among others) a closely related form can be up to 7 ft (2.1 m) thick at breast height (4 ft or 1.2 m above ground) and having the same thickness in its upper ventricosity. It also has a height of up to 100 ft (30 m). The fan-shaped leaves are 3 m (9.8 ft) wide (larger, to 12 ft or 3.7 m in the bottomlands form) with petioles 2 m (6.6 ft) long; the margins are armed with spines. In male plants, the small flowers are largely concealed within the scaly catkins; the much larger female flowers reach two centimetres (0.79 inches) wide and produce yellow to brown fruits. Each fruit contains one to three seeds, each enclosed within a woody endocarp. The floodplains variety is almost certainly the most massive of all palms, comparable to Jubaea chilensis, the Chilean wine palm.