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Roystonea oleracea
Also called Caribbean Royal Palm, South American Royal Palm, Royal Palm
In Singapore: Cabbage Palm, Palmiste, Feathery Cabbage Palm, Caribbean Royal Palm, Caribee Royal Palm, West Indian Royal Palm, 菜王棕 (Grown in Singapore)
Imperial palm is a very tall, single-trunked palm from the Lesser Antilles and northern South America, prized as a stately ornamental tree in warm, frost-free climates. Its key needs are full sun, ample water, and room to grow, since it can reach around 40 m.
Roystonea oleracea, sometimes known as the Caribbean royal palm, palmiste, imperial palm or cabbage palm, is a species of palm which is native to the Lesser Antilles, Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago. It is also reportedly naturalized in Guyana and on the islands of Mauritius and Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
Its specific epithet oleracea means "vegetable/herbal" in Latin and is a form of holeraceus (oleraceus). The plant's buds was eaten in the West Indies.
Roystonea oleracea is native to Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique in the Lesser Antilles, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, northern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia. It is naturalised in Antigua, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. It often grows in areas subject which are wet for at least part of the year—coastal areas near the sea, gallery forests in seasonally flooded savannas.
The tallest and "most majestic" royal palm, Roystonea oleracea is often used as an ornamental tree. The wood can be used for construction. The terminal bud is edible. The sap of young inflorescences can be fermented to produce alcohol. In his 1750 Natural History of Barbados Griffith Hughes reported that the immature inflorescences could be pickled and eaten as a vegetable.
[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 Roystonea oleracea 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.
