The 'Queen of Sarawak' palms bearing fruits

The top branch is showing inflorescence and the lower branch shows the ripe fruits.
The  inflorescence (flowering structure) is highly branched to 3 orders and spreading.
Picture shows the orange variety.
Location:  Provinsi Lakka,  Zone F

 I have great love for this 'Queen of Sarawak' palms – the Sealing Wax Palm or 'Pinang Raja' or 'lakka' as it is variously called. It grows naturally in Bintulu's peat swamp forest areas but what I have done here is to transplant it in a lowland dipterocarp forest environment. No problem. It is a palm that can thrive well even when removed from its original habitat. There are two species I plant here viz the orange form and the red form. The brilliant orange or red colours that one sees is actually the sheath or leaf bases. Seen from a distance these leaf sheaths form colourful crown shafts and thus make the palm a preferred choice for the 'exotic tropical look'. These leaf sheaths will fall off the erect stem when they are old and in the process leaving leaf scars. The Sealing Wax Palm has a clumping habit, which I think is a blessing because offsets can be cut off from the clump and become new planting materials. Another way to propagate this palm is by germinating the seeds. From my experience the growth rate and germination rate is poor when grown from seeds. Thus better get fresh materials from the main clump's offsets.

After flowering, fruits are formed in shallow pits on the rachilla or branch bearing the flowers ( and later the fruits). Guess I'll try my luck again to germinate those seeds below.

Ripe fruits of the 'Pinang Lakka'  held in shallow pits.
Sealing Wax Palm - Cyrtostachys renda
Syn: Crytostachys lakka

Uprooting a beauty

Trench the surrounding and dig out the  base of the clump into a root ball

Close up of Sandak or chisel

 How do you uproot a beautiful palm and find home for it elsewhere, successfully?  At the park it done by simple manual method of trenching and  making the base of the palm like a ball.  By this method the root system is intact and the clump can be transplanted to its new home.  The main tool is the 'sandak' or chisel used for cutting the base of oil palm branches.  When the root ball is free it is a little effort to wedge it out of the trench.  The Sealing Wax Palm has been previously known as Cyrtostachys lakka but now it is called  Cyrtostachys renda.  It is native to Borneo, thus Sarawak, thus Bintulu.  The one that I removed today will be made as instant planting material for the Provinsi Lakka.  Today I saved RM 500, being the price of the palm this size at the current market value.

At this height , the palm will fetch RM 500 at any local nursery in Bintulu.