THE 



.•CI 



GARDENS' BULLETIN, 



5TRAIT5 5ETrLEnEINT5. 



Vol. II. Issued June 28th, 1920. No. 8. 



The Oil Palm in the East. 11. 



III. the paper whicii appeared under the above title in the 

 April n amber of the Gardens' Bulletin, several points of interest to 

 the prospective planter of the oil-palm were touched upon, which it 

 is no^" proposed to treat more fully. 



Selection of Land. Most of the thick palm-forest of West 

 Equatorial Africa is found in broad open valleys with gentle .un- 

 dulations, where the soil and the "rainfall favour the palm, and 

 along the level plains from the coast to the high bush. It becomes 

 scarcer in hilly regions and it is seldom seen, except in widely scat- 

 tered patches, at altitudes of more than one thousand feet. The 

 palm-forest stops where the evergreen equatorial forest begins. 

 Elae'is is essentially a tree of the lowlands and it is e^^en found 

 in situations which are intermittently submerged in periods of 

 floods — 'but yet it does not thrive in swampy or badly drained places 

 where water stagnat/es. 'Briefly it is at its best on well drained flats 

 of deep rich soil with [ilenty of atmospheric and soil moisture, and 

 it will be apparent, if we keep in view the general configuration 

 of the Malay Peninsula, that its range of profl table cultivation is 

 not a very wide onie — at least not if we compare it with that of 

 Rul)ber which accommodates itself to a wide range of soil conditions 

 and to greatly varying altitudes — or with that of the Coconut which 

 thrives right down to the sea-board in almost pure sand, or along 

 the course of tidal rivers in salt-impregnated soil. 



The selection of land for the planting of Elae'is will there- 

 fore have to be carefully thought out, the planter keeping well in 

 view not only the .suitability of the soil, but the configuration of 

 the land and its easy accessibility by water or by road ; also the 

 neces.sity of a thorough but economic network of communications 

 between all parts of the estate and the factory. iSome of the sugar 

 estates of Province Wellesley, long since transformed into rubber 

 estates, with their canalisations, would probably well fulfill, in 

 respect of communications, both internal and external, the require- 

 ments of an Elaeifi estate; this, of course, apart from considerations 

 of soil. 



