Tucuma palm

The Essence

"Astrocaryum vulgare is a fiercely spiny, usually clustering feather palm of the Guianas and eastern Amazonia, described by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in 1824. Its epithet means "common", and it earns it: the IUCN assessment published in 2022 maps the species across French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and 21 Brazilian states and federal units, with an extent of occurrence of 3,218,990 km² — over 3 million km² — and calls it widespread and common with a stable population. Unusually for an Amazonian palm, it has gained from forest clearance. It is a pioneer of terra firme, low vegetation cover and open ground rather than undisturbed old growth, regenerates easily from its multiple stems after damage, and can put out new shoots after a fire. The orange fruit is the reason most people know it. In French Guiana the fatty, provitamin-A-rich mesocarp is the base of bouillon d'awara, the traditional Easter dish; in northern Brazil raw tucumã pulp goes into the X-caboquinho sandwich with fried banana and cheese. Wikipedia reports that a mature tree can yield up to 50 kg of fruit a year — around 2.5 kg of pulp oil and 1.5 kg of seed oil — with a cited potential of 4.8 tons of fatty material per hectare. The oil goes into soap, cosmetics and biodiesel. Immature endosperm yields a drink called vino de tucuma, and fermented spathe sap a palm wine. One caution on names: older ethnobotanical text reproduced on Palmweb and Palmpedia calls this species the chambira palm, and Palmweb's common-name list for it also carries canangucha and aguaje — names that belong to the unrelated moriche palm, Mauritia flexuosa. Aggregated vernacular lists for this species are worth reading with care."

The epidermis and hypodermis of the sword leaf yield an important fibre, used in manufacturing mats, hats, hammocks and fishing lines and nets — the wording of the IUCN assessment, which draws on Pérez-Arbeláez (1956) via Palmweb; indigenous Amazonian people extract the leaf fibre for cordage, hammocks, belts and woven goods, and Useful Tropical Plants describes it as rot-resistant and reportedly the strongest fibre in the Amazon. Black rings turned from the hard seed shell are a well-known Amazonian craft: Wikipedia records that in the 1800s the ring served as a symbol of marriage for slaves and natives who could not afford gold, and that Catholic missionaries now wear them as a symbol of solidarity with the poor and support in the struggle for equality, social justice and human rights. Schultes (1974), cited by both Palmweb and the IUCN assessment, recorded that Witoto medicine men believe the heavy trunk spines are the favourite and most potent darts shot into the human body by malevolent spirits to cause sickness and misfortune; Palmweb also cites a Yukuna belief that the tree embodies a spirit that turned into an Astrocaryum in order to continue living. Traditional medicinal uses listed by PFAF include a root decoction for furunculosis and syphilis, seed oil as a laxative and for rheumatism, pain and earache, the vitamin-A-rich fruit against xerophthalmia, and the pulp for coughs.