Always The Humble and Resilient Nipa

The nipa (pronounced neepa, as in long e) palm or nypa fruticans is an unusual tree that thrives abundantly on the creek at the back of our house. Obviously it is the perfect and natural breeding area which is muddy and wet ground. This particular nipa shoots its fronds or leaves up to about three to four meters in height out of its usually submerged trunk. A resilient specie, the nipa is from the genus Nypa and the sole palm that thrives as mangrove. It is also very tolerant of the yearly dry season in our place.

It bears cluster of globular flowers that develop into miniature coconut-like dark brown “fruits” which contain nuts. Young fruits yield inside a firm gelatinous meat, called kaong, we use to mix with fruit(y) salads.

Farmers also tap the young flower clusters and extract the sap for fermentation and aging. The fermented sap is turned either into an alcoholic beverage locally known as tuba with a mild sweet taste but a potent and inebriating drink. Known to yield sap with a very high sugar content, nipa is a proven source of ethanol three times more than the yield from sugarcane.

In our locality the nipa is a popular and natural source of roofing and wall materials taken from the upright palm tree leaves woven into the finished shingles.

Thank you for hosting Luiz, Denise, Laerte and Valkyrien. See more flowers here at: Today’s Flowers

This is my post for This is My World. Many thanks to Klaus, Sandy, Wren, Fishing Guy, Louise and Sylvia for hosting this wonderful meme: My World – Tuesday.

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16 thoughts on “Always The Humble and Resilient Nipa”

  1. Japa: What an interesting tree, thanks so much for sharing this information.

  2. I am all for this plant, beautiful, tough, reliable with great potential.
    It is always interesting to know about different plants. I grow a small native palm with yellow flowers at the trunk base. It is a vigorous and tough plant too, beautiful with broad pleated leaves, common name is weevil palm. I do not know its scientific name I have to investigate.

  3. aloha,

    this are very scenic photos of this plant, you captured some beautiful shots of this..thanks for sharing

    noel

  4. Producing Nypa sap to ethanol or nypa by products is solely intellectual property gazette to Pioneer Bio Industries Corporation (PBIC) as we search in World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO). Anyone who interested to do business should contact PBIC to get proper position. Truly it is good business. To know about the company you can search at http://www.mypbic.org.

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