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Copernicia alba
Also called Caranday Palm
In Singapore: Caranday Palm, Caranda, Palma Blanca, 白巴西蜡棕 (Grown in Singapore)
Copernicia alba, the Caranday or wax palm, is a tall South American fan palm of seasonally flooded woodlands and dry chaco. It is grown mainly as a landscape palm in warm, frost-free climates, where full sun and well-drained soil suit it best.
Copernicia alba is a South American species of palm tree, which is found in the Humid Chaco ecoregion in Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil (in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul) and Argentina (especially the province of Formosa, and less abundantly towards drier areas). They often, but not always, form dense single-species woodlands. Its common names in Spanish show the various colours (and technical qualities) that the trunk takes according to its environment: palma blanca, palma negra, palma colorada ("white", "black", and "red" palm, respectively). In Guaraní, it is called caranday, "water palm". Its English trade name is wax palm or caranday wax palm (it belongs to the same genus as the Carnauba wax palm).
Ancient peoples in South America used wax palm for making candles by scraping away wax on the leaves.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Copernicia alba by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
