FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
BACTRIS GASIPAES Palmae, PEACH PALM
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is from Venezuela. On the Amazon, says Bates, this plant does not grow wild but has been cultivated from time immemorial by the Indians. The fruit is dry and mealy and may be compared in taste to a mixture of chestnuts and cheese. Bunches of sterile or seedless fruit sometimes occur at Ega and at Para. it is one of hte priincipal articles of food at Ega when in season and is boiled an d eaaten with treacle and salt. Spencer compares the taste of the mealy pericarp, when cooked, to a mixture of potato and chestnut but says it is superior to either. Seeman says in most instances the seed is abortive, the whole fruit being a farinaceous mass. Humboldt says every cluster contains from 50 to 80 fruits, yellow like apples but purpling as they ripen, two or three inches in diameter, slightly saccharine and exceedingly nutritious. he found it cultivated in abundance along the upper Orinoco. in Trinidad, the peach palm is said to be very prolific, bearing two crops a year, at one season the fruit all seedless and another season bearing seeds. The seedless fruits are highly appreciated by natives of all classes.
