Doub Palm

Overview

Doub palm is distributed from India through South-East Asia to New Guinea and North Australia. It is particularly abundant in India, Burma (Myanmar), and Cambodia, where it is frequently planted. Its distribution probably followed Indian trade routes in prehistoric times. This plant is also used as a natural shelter for birds, bats, and wild animals.

Vernacular Names

Lontar, Siwalan (Indonesian), Palmira (Brazil), Faecherpalme (German), Palmira (Tagalog-Philippines), Lontar (Malaysia), Tan bin (Myanmar), Not (Thailand), Loost (Vietnamese).

Agroecology

Doub palm is an adaptable plant and can be found up to about 800 m altitude. This plant will grow and produce well with rainfall as high as 5,000 mm per year, the temperatures never drop below 10°C, with an optimum annual average temperature around 30°C, but it withstands extreme temperatures as high as 45°C and as low as 0°C. These plants can grow well in full sun even when they are young. Prefers sandy soil, but plants can thrive in a variety of conditions.

Morphology

• Trunks - large and straight, ringed with leaf scars.
• Stems - massive, straight, up to 1 m in diameter at the base, conical up to about 4 m high, thereafter cylindrical and 40-50 cm in diameter, occasionally branched, covered by leaf bases when young, rough, and ringed with leaf scars when older
• Leaves - arranged spirally, leathery, induplicate, strongly costapalmate.
• Inflorescence - interfoliar, peduncled, shorter than the leaves, the male and female dissimilar. Male: massive, up to 2 m long, consisting of about 8 partial inflorescences of three rachillae each. Female: unbranched or with a single first order branch, flowers larger than male ones, 3-merous, tricarpellate.
• Fruits - a globose to subglobose drupe, 15-20 cm in diameter, 1.5-2.5 kg in weight, dark purple to black; petals persistent, brittle, not imbricate.
• Seeds - shallowly to deeply bilobed, pointed; endosperm sweet and gelatinous when immature, hard and ivory-like with a central cavity when mature.

Cultivation

Propagated by seeds - pre-soak for 24 hours in warm water and sow in containers or in situ. 

Chemical Constituents

Flavonoids, alkaloids, saponins, tannins, carotenoids, β carotene, steroids, triterpenoid, propanediol acetate, benzenediol acetate, propanediamine.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• The young plant is used to relieve biliousness, dysentery, and gonorrhea.
• Young roots are anthelmintic and diuretic.
• Has a potential immuno-suppressive action.
• Useful as an anti-inflammatory and for dropsy and gastric conditions.
• Studies have suggested analgesic, antibacterial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, anticancer properties.
• The ash of flowers is taken to relieve heartburn, enlarged spleen, and liver.
• The bark decoction, with salt, is used as a mouth wash.
• The pulp of the mature fruit relieves dermatitis.
• Dried roots can also be smoked to heal nasal complaints.
• Sap from the flower stalk is prized as a tonic, diuretic, stimulant, laxative, and anti phlegmatic and amoebicide.