2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Oil palm, or Eleis (lat. Elaeis) - a genus of plants that has only two species, one of which grows in Africa, and the other in South America. The genus belongs to the Palm family (Latin Palmaceae). The oil palm is famous for its oil, which is obtained from the pulp of the plant's fruit. This oil is widely used today in the food industry, causing conflicting opinions about its benefits and harms for the human body, especially for children.
What's in your name
The Latin name of the genus "Elaeis" is based on the consonant Greek word meaning "oil", moreover, not any oil, but one that in Russian has the adjective "liquid" or "vegetable". Since palm oil, produced by man from the fruits of this genus of palm trees since ancient times, is just vegetable and liquid, it gave botanists a reason to give such a Latin name to Palms.
Description
The oil palm is a single-stemmed tree over 20 meters high. The feathery leaves forming a crown at the top of the trunk reach a length of three to five meters.
Small flowers have three sepals and three petals, forming numerous dense clusters.
From the dense cluster of flowers, huge bundles are formed, consisting of reddish fruits the size of a large plum. Each fruit consists of a fleshy and oily shell with a palm kernel or seed inside. This seed is also rich in vegetable oil.
Two species of the genus "Elaeis"
1. Elaeis guineensis (lat. Elaeis guineensis)called
African oil palm, or shortly, Oil palm, was born in the western part of the African continent, where from ancient times (five thousand years before the present day), the fruits of the palm tree were used by people to obtain oil. From there, the oil palm later moved to the island of Madagascar, and also moved to the Asian continent, to countries with a tropical climate. It is this type of palm that supplies people all over the world with palm oil.
The African oil palm has a strong root system that can provide food and moisture for trees that can reach 20 to 30 meters in height. Palm trees grow slowly, because they have nowhere to rush, since the lifespan of the tree reaches 120 years. At the beginning of life, a palm tree looks more like a shrub than a tree, and only after three to five years does the trunk of a tree begin to form due to the petioles of dying leaves stacking on top of each other.
Plumose, spreading large leaves, of which there are from 20 to 40 in adult trees, partially die off every year, being replaced by fresh ones, forming a fluffy crown at the top of the trunk. Strong leaf stalks are protected by sharp thorns, which can easily injure the hand.
In the axils of the leaves, dense inflorescences are born of numerous small flowers, turning into huge clusters of fruits, the color of which can be orange, purple or black. Palm oil is produced from the fleshy pulp and the seed within this pulp.
2. Elaeis oleifera (lat. Elaeis oleifera)called
American oil palm
was born in South America. Although vegetable oil is also produced from its fruits, it is used by the local population without going to world markets. In addition, the pulp of the fruit is fed to livestock and maintains the health and beauty of hair.
Eleis olive is much less common in nature than the previous species. It is also inferior to the African oil palm by the size of a tree, and accordingly, the fruits of the palm are much smaller than those of the leader.
This does not prevent the American oil palm four times a year to delight its owners with a harvest of red-orange fruits, from the kernel of which a fatty oil is obtained, which is close in composition to coconut oil.
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