Hyphaene compressa
English: Doum palm.
Names: Boni: Mede; Bajuni: Marara; Kiswahili: Mkoma; Boran, Orma: Kone; Turkana: Eng’oli.
Source: Lamu provings.
DD: Kalium, Silicon series, Iron series.
Habitat: at the coast; along rivers and seasonal watercourses; altitude to 1400 m.
Use: fibrous pulp around seeds is edible, raw or dried into flour; dried seeds for carving designs; as beads round their camels necks; carved beads as adornment; leaves for thatching houses; fibre for weaving baskets, making mats; trunk for boulding poles and fences.
Botany
Tree; 12 to 25m tall.
Stem: trunk solitary or branching to produce several trunks; usually with up to 20 crowns; bark grey to dark brown, cracked vertically, leaf scars create a consistent pattern up the trunk.
Leaves: long, remaining on the trunk; folded down until they drop off; dark green, fan like.
Male inflorescence: to 1.5m long, flowers to 2mm, pale green
Female inflorescense: to the same length, flowers to 5mm long, bright green.
Fruit: in huge bunches, along a velvety brown branch; shiny bright orange to brown when almost ripe, fading to paler orange when ripe; 9 cm long.