Doum Palm

Borana(kone), Chonyi(mkoma), Digo(mkoma), Pokot(takayua), Kamba(ilala), Rendille(baar), Turkana(engo'l), Taveta(irara), Swahili(mkoche) Daasanach(kulidhe).

Description

A (un)branched usually multistemmed palm tree up to 15 m high. Trunk grey. Leaves and petiole up to 2 m long. Petiole semicircular in cross-section, edges armed with sharp black spines.

Leaf lamina up to 0.8 m long spreading, with numerous longitudinal folds and segmented in the upper (third) part into up to 60 segments.

Flowers are borne on long inflorescences to 1.5 m. Fruits: Young fruit dark red or maroon. Mature fruit to 8 cm long, yellow to red, glossy, smooth with markings, laterally compressed on 2 sides. It grows in Kenya along Kerio and Turkwel Rivers and at Lakori, Kilifi and Malindi.

In Afirca : Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and south Mozambique. Sandy coastal lowlands, places with a high water table, along seasonal watercourses, open sandy flood plains. Often forming pure sands. Much affected by bushes and taller trees. Alluvial, deep sand.

Uses

The brown fibrous pulps of mature fruit eaten raw. As with coconut, the juice in immature fruits is drunk e.g. by Pokot also used in beer making.

The fruit's outer coat (epicarp) is peeled, pulp is sliced off the stony "seed" (endocarp), sun-dried, ground, mixed with blood to a brown, sticky, fibrous mixture (lokot) and eaten or sold in markets (Turkana). Young germinating seedling is dug up and embryo eaten (Turkana).

Medicinal

Fruit pulp is eaten for worms (Giriama).

Other

Leaves used for making baskets, brooms, mats, hats, ropes, handbags, and in thatching (Turkana), sewing milk containers (Daasanach). Leaf rachis used as a stirrer for melted fat.

Trunks strong, durable and used as poles in fencing (Turkana), in house construction, as fuelwood and when bound together they make good fishing rafts. Hard fruit endocarp used as fuelwood.

Roots are a source of dye used in the basketry industry. Leaves may also be dyed black by soaking for a week in a herb, lorimoch, usually found in assaociation with Salvadora persica roots.

Management

Propagated by seed (endocarp) with pulp removed. Preferably it should be scarified to hasten germination, which under normal conditions, may take several months to a year. Preferably plant deep in moist sand.

Remarks

Fruit pulp is also used as food in Sudan and Egypt.