Help to ID palm in Malaysia - Euterpe oleracea?

[julian]

Hi, I'm trying to identify a palm in my garden and someone has suggested to me that it's a Euterpe oleracea

Here are some pics, and more on my blog post here: http://tropical-gardening.blogspot.com/200...-palm-tree.html

Thanks for any help!

(I'm not sure why, but the pictures and attachments don't seem to be working... on my blog post I have pictures of the trunk, the flowers and fruit.)

[Dr. George]

Hi, I'm trying to identify a palm in my garden and someone has suggested to me that it's a Euterpe oleracea

Here are some pics, and more on my blog post here: http://tropical-gardening.blogspot.com/200...-palm-tree.html

Thanks for any help!

(I'm not sure why, but the pictures and attachments don't seem to be working... on my blog post I have pictures of the trunk, the flowers and fruit.)

Hi Julian -

Welcome to PalmTalk and to IPS!

There are folks much better at ID than I who should be able to help with your ID. Looks to me like E. oleracea. There is a very recent post on Euterpes that may be of interest:

http://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=20670

Best Regards - gmp

[julian]

Thanks gmp - I had seen that post, and it's true they look like that, but I wanted to get another's point of view.

Does that mean I can try eating the palm shoots/palm hearts?

Cheers,

Julian

[amazondk]

Julian,

You have an Euterpe olearcea there alright. Yes you can eat the palm hearts and you can make juice from the berries. Although you need a fair amount of berries to produce much juice.

dk

[bgl]

Hi Julian,

Welcome to the PalmTalk Forum! And yes, as dk pointed out, you can make juice from the berries but they are tiny and my guess is that you need thousands in order to make even a small amount of juice!

Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii!

Bo-Göran

[Walter John]

Mellow Yellow

[amazondk]

Bo,

If the berries are good you can make a couple of good sized glasses from one bunch of fruit. You need to do the following:

* Wash the berries well.

* Let them sit in almost hot water for about 30 minutes or so.

* Smash them to release the pulp from the seeds.

* Strain the pulp through a fairly open strainer to allow a pasty liquid to go through.

* Mix with water to the desired texture. Normally the juice is really more like a milk shake than a juice drink.

* You can consume with or without sugar. Most people here like sugar. I just drink the stuff straight.

Julian,

I forgot to welcome you to Palm Talk. It is great to have someone from Malaysia on board.

dk

[bgl]

Don,

Thanks a lot for the info! My main challenge is to simply collect the fruit - it's like 40 ft up there!!

Bo-Göran

[amazondk]

Don,

Thanks a lot for the info! My main challenge is to simply collect the fruit - it's like 40 ft up there!!

Bo-Göran

Bo,

Hopefully one of these days I can get to Hawaii with my wife and kids. She was raised climbing up açai trees and probably still can get up there. When up cutting down the fruit you then swing the tree until it gets close enough to the other one to jump over to it and cut the fruit off of that one. Maybe she won´t want to do that part anymore. Her mom was just telling me the other day how good Raquel was at climbing up the tree and harvesting the fruit when growing up in their home up in the jungle. I certainly am not going to try it. Cutting the fruit off of the Oenocarpus bataua is a real challange as the fruit clusters are bigger and much heavier. She used to harvest those as well.

dk

[julian]

Hi all and thanks for the welcome and information - great to know that there are experts here!