African Oil Palm

African oil palm grows best in full sun and moist soils, tolerating light, medium, and heavy soils across a range from acid to alkaline. It thrives where daytime temperatures run 20-35°C, though established palms can withstand temperatures as low as 12°C and brief light frosts. Its adventitious root system forms a dense mat in the upper 35cm of soil, with only a few roots reaching below a metre, and in plantations the palms are kept on a long rotation of roughly 25-30 years before being felled and replanted.

A fruit bunch takes five to six months to develop from pollination to maturity, and bearing palms are harvested year-round. Bunch weight ranges from 5 to 30kg depending on the age of the tree, and a hectare of oil palm yields around 20 tonnes of fruit a year, producing roughly 4,000kg of palm oil along with seed kernels processed into kernel oil and meal.

Culinary: Palm oil pressed from the fruit's fleshy mesocarp and palm kernel oil extracted from its seeds go into margarine, ice cream, chocolate confections, cookies, and bread, while the residual kernel cake is processed as cattle feed. In West Africa the palm has traditionally supplied rural communities with vegetable oil and fat as well as palm wine.

Industrial: Beyond food uses, palm oil is refined into soaps, cosmetics, candles, biofuels, and lubricating greases, and is used in processing tinplate and coating iron plates.

Ornamental: The palm is also grown as an ornamental tree in subtropical areas, a role in which it was first carried to Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century.

African oil palm originates in the tropical forests of West and Central Africa, between Angola and the Gambia, where it was domesticated along the south-facing Atlantic coast; the exact timing of that domestication is not documented. During the sixteenth century the slave trade carried the palm to Brazil, while it reached Southeast Asia only in the nineteenth century, initially planted there as an ornamental before becoming a major plantation crop through the twentieth century.