Highlights today at the park - 13 June'16

"Sawit" or Oil Palm fruit bunch cut vertically showing the compact packaging of the fruits.
Zone C

Hippeastrum hybrid
Zone C

Pipit Rawa (Malay) - Chestnut Munia
Zone F

"Sepenuh"( Malay) - Proiphys amboinensis,
Zone C

Little Spiderhunter targeting at the Yellow Ixora
Zone C

Parts of the oil palm fruit

Densely packed fruits of the oil palm, Elaeis quineensis

I have in this picture split the oil palm fruit bunch in half.   From this cross-section view it is clear how closely packed are the fruits.  At the bottom of the picture is a cross section of a fruit.  Starting from the outermost layer of the fruit (skin) is the epicarp which is variously coloured orange to yellow and overlain with deep violet or black in exposed parts.  The middle layer of the fruit is called the mesocarp and in the picture is thick, oily, fleshy, fibrous, and  coloured deep orange.   The black ring is the endocarp, or innermost layer of the fruit wall, also referred to as shell.  Finally the white center is the endosperm, which is the nutritive body of the seed, sometimes called the kernel.

Harvesting ripe oil palm fruit bunch

Cross-section of ripe 'Sawit' (Malay) fruits or the oil palm fruits (Elaeis quineensis)

The base of the fronds is cut first with a sickle before cutting the fruits stalk
Location: Zone C

Fruiting heads

A four  year old oil palm tree with its fruiting head packed with 10- 15 fruit bunches
Location : Zone F

Top view of densely packed young oil palm tree
Location : Zone F

 The most important part of an oil palm in productivity terms is its fruiting head. Here are packed the fruits bunches or at certain periods mere clusters of finger-like long unproductive male flowers.  This is typical of a hermaphrodiate tree where both male and female flowers are borne on a separate inflorescences on the same tree.  If you are lucky in certain times of the year the fruiting head is densely packed with female flowers that bear the fruits later, while male flowers only give you unwanted waste fibrous materials.  For what it is any oil palm tree will return to bear female flowers after a while and that same tree could  later on bear a mixture of male and female flowers too.  So if you have some trees displaying male flowers, don't despair and cut those trees.  Sooner or later they will exhibit fine female flowers and fruits.  It would take about 5-6 months for the fruits to grow and ripen for the picking.  Depending on many factors, a well-grown tree after 10 years should be able to produce about  20 -30 kilos weight in a single fruit bunch.  Each fruiting head can consist between 15- 20 bunches with each one having different ripening periods.  The moral of the story is that you need to plant many oil palm trees to keep a small family alive.  Most native subsistence and commercial farmers in Sarawak now plant between 10 - 50 acres of oil palm trees per family  to gain adequate economic returns from their oil palm land, capital inputs and labour (usually self-employed family labour or employed immigrant Indonesian labour).  Finally it is important to bear in mind that the economic life of an oil palm tree is between 20 -30 years.  Thereafter you need to carryout re-planting works  if you happen to like cultivating oil palm trees  or decide on other options like developing the land for other commercial pursuits since you have a valuable and scarce property in hand i.e. your oil palm land bank.

The tree on the left has a mixture of fruit bunches and clusters of finger-like male flowers
Location : Zone D

Fruiting head of oil palm tree - Elaeis quineensis or commonly called the African Oil Palm.