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Corypha umbraculifera
In Singapore: Talipot Palm, Great Fan Palm, Gebang (Grown in Singapore)
The talipot palm is a very large fan palm from India and Sri Lanka, grown as a landscape specimen in warm regions. It is monocarpic: it lives up to 60 years, flowers once with the world's largest inflorescence, then dies.
Corypha umbraculifera, the talipot palm, is a species of palm native to eastern and southern India and Sri Lanka. It is also grown in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Mauritius and the Andaman Islands. It is one of the five accepted species in the genus Corypha. It is a flowering plant with the largest inflorescence in the world. It lives up to 60 years before bearing flowers and fruits. It dies shortly after.
The talipot palm is cultivated in South India and Sri Lanka. It is also cultivated in Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and the Andaman Islands. It is also grown sparsely in China.
Historically, the leaves were written upon in various South Asian and South-East Asian cultures using an iron stylus to create palm leaf manuscripts. In the Philippines, it is locally known as buri or buli. The leaves are also used for thatching, and the sap is tapped to make palm wine. In South India, the palm leaves are used to make umbrellas for agricultural workers. The tree is known as kudapana (കുടപ്പന) in Malayalam, talo (, ତାଳ) in Odia, sreetalam (శ్రీతాళం) in Telugu and kudaipanai (குடைப்பனை) in Tamil, which means umbrella palm. The plant is known as tala (තල) in Sri Lanka, by local Sinhalese people.
[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 Corypha umbraculifera 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.
