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Para piassava

Leopoldinia piassaba

Also called Piassava, Piassaba

Para piassava
Photo: Unknown, Public domain

Leopoldinia piassaba is a tall palm of Amazonian black water rivers, grown mainly for its tough piassava fiber used in brooms and baskets. It is a wet tropical forest species that is rarely grown as a garden or houseplant.

Family
Arecaceae (Palm family)
Grows as
Palm
Light
Part shade, Bright indirect
Water
Keep soil consistently moist, as it grows along seasonally flooded black water river banks.
Soil
Moist, acidic, organic-rich soil or sandy loam with good drainage.
Temperature
22–32 °C; protect below 15 °C
How easy
Hard
Native range
SE. Colombia to N. Brazil
Climate
wet tropical

About

Leopoldinia piassaba, the Para piassava, piassava fiber palm or piassava palm, is a palm native to black water rivers in Amazonian Brazil and Venezuela, from which is extracted piassava, a high caliber and water resistant fiber. Piassaba fiber is made into brooms, baskets and other products. This plant is also a natural habitat of the Rhodnius brethesi which is a potential vector of Chagas disease and it is cited in Flora Brasiliensis by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius.

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Leopoldinia piassaba 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.

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