Fan palm of Africa

[Walter John]

Saw a great doco tonight on the flood plains of the Kalahari. There was a few different palms shown, one had fan leaves and I was wondering what it may have been.

There were elephants shaking it to get the fruit.

Anybody know what it is ? Hyphaene palm of some sort perhaps ?

[cfkingfish]

Maybe Hyphaene, but could be Borassus as well. Elephants make good use of Borassus, as they rub their skin up against the tree to mark and clean themselves, and they eat Borassus fruit whole   , they poop out the seed, which provides a good germination medium. May sound dirty, but it is nature!

[www.dadluvsu.com]

So that makes this woman a seed collector?

Ew. I think I'll continue to use rarepalmseeds.com and ortanique.com

[Jeff Searle]

(PiousPalms @ Jan. 13 2008,08:44)

QUOTE

So that makes this woman a seed collector?

Ew. I think I'll continue to use rarepalmseeds.com and ortanique.com

Just another day at work collecting specimens, I think.

Jeff

[Kris]

Dear William  

fentastic still and very apt to the above post no_2...

thanks & love,

Kris  

By the way hope all the seeds germinate without any fungus infestation...

[Joe palma]

Wal,

The fan palm could be Medemia argun or the Nubian desert palm. I beleive it is only native to Sudan though.

[Ntheastpalms]

Wal I think that the palms were borassus.

I also remember seeing a David Attenborough doco where the elephants were eating the seeds on that as well.

[chris.oz]

Wal,

Borassus aetheopium.

like this one I saw in central Sudan.

[chris.oz]

Some of my lady freinds from Sudan  gathered around the UN camp in Kadugli

[Walter John]

Thanks for the response, these elephants would butt the palm tree and down the fruit would fall onto their backs. If they didn't have a trunk, they'd never get the damn things off their backs.  

actually they did fall off their backs to the ground, just kidding.

Some shirt potential there Chris.