Phoenix sylvestris, the wild or silver date palm, is a tall, hardy palm native to India, Nepal and Bangladesh, grown mainly for its sap, fruit and jaggery. It is a species, not a genus, and grows best in full sun with warm temperatures and reasonable water.
Family
Arecaceae (Palm family)
Grows as
Palm
Light
Full sun
Water
Water regularly while young and during dry spells, then let the top few centimetres of soil dry out between waterings.
Soil
Well-drained loam or sandy soil; tolerates a range of soil types including alkaline and poor soils.
Temperature
18–40 °C; protect below 5 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Native range
SW. India, Sri Lanka
Climate
wet tropical
About
Phoenix sylvestris (sylvestris - Latin, of the forest) also known as silver date palm, Indian date, sugar date palm or wild date palm, is a species of flowering plant in the palm family native to southern Pakistan, most of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh. It has been introduced to southeastern China, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands. Growing in plains and scrubland up to 1300 m above sea level, the fruit from this palm species is used to make wine and jelly. The sap is tapped and drunk fresh or fermented into toddy. The fresh sap is boiled to make palm jaggery in West Bengal state of India and Bangladesh.
[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 Phoenix sylvestris 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.