Caryota mitis

fishtail palm

Fishtail palm is a popular landscape palm introduced to southern Florida from Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, it has exhibited invasive tendencies, thanks to the hundreds of beautifully colored fruits produced by each trunk. Although they look like they might be tasty, the fruits contain raphides (calcium oxalate), which produce sores, numbness, or worse in humans. When cleaned of their irritant flesh, the seeds are used to make beads in India.

Also in India, the trunks of this palm are processed to extract edible starch from the stem. Like other palms, the top bud (palm heart) can be eaten and the sap harvested from inflorescences to make into palm sugar or fermented to make an alcoholic beverage called toddy.

Here's a video showing one method of how toddy is harvested from a palm inflorescence in India, accompanied by some catchy Indian music:

Fuzz scraped from young leaves can be used as tinder to start a fire. It’s crazy how in our society, fewer and fewer people learn how to start a fire since our heat for cooking and warmth is provided through electricity or gas. It’s easy for us to forget that this is one of the most crucial survival skills. Here's someone starting a fire with scrapings from a palm leaf, similar to what would be done with this palm:

Fishtail palm is one of the only palms with bipinnate foliage, and is thus easily identified.