Black palm wood, also known as “Black Palmira”, is the wood of the fishtail palm, botanically: Caryota urens, family Arecaceae. The palm is naturally widespread in India and Ceylon and has exceptionally decorative feathery leaf fronds that resemble the skeleton of a fish. The fruit clusters are no less attractive and hang down from the leaf axils in long cascading panicles. The fruit is also used as a type of sago. Other names are: Jaggery Palm, Toddy’s Fishtail Palm. The species is cultivated in other parts of the tropics.
Extremely large vascular bundles, which are also darkly set off from the storage tissue. This creates the unusual interplay of light and dark in all 3 sectional planes. Very decorative.
Black palm wood weighs approx. 0.90 – 1.18 tons/m3 at 12 %, density decreases from the outside to the inside! Drying cross-sections of less than 50 mm is largely unproblematic. The dimensional stability is average. Due to the differences in density, processing is not always easy. In the event of heavy use, black conductive bundles can also detach from the lighter and softer fabric and thus pose a risk of injury to the user. The wood should therefore not be exposed to higher bending stresses.
Decorative applications, furniture, billiard cues, writing instruments, etc.
| Sources: |
Gottwald (1970): Wood identification of the most important commercial woods |
