188 PHILIPPINE PALMS 
of prepared young leaves are used for religious purposes on 
Palm Sunday. The leaflets are used for wrapping a rice con- 
fection known as suman, as described under Corypha elata. 
While the most valuable crop in the Philippines is rice, the 
coconut and abaka (Manila hemp) compete for second place. 
The most important product of the coconut palm is coco- 
nut oil, which is obtained by pressing the kernels. Formerly 
the dried kernels, known as copra, were exported from the 
Philippines, but recently a number of factories have been es- 
tablished, and it seems that in the future the oil rather than the 
copra will be exported. The pressed cake is valuable as a food 
for stock or as a fertilizer. With the present high price of fuel 
in the Philippines it has been used to a. considerable extent as 
fuel. The oil is used extensively for the manufacture of food 
products and soap. 
The shells of the coconut make a very high grade of charcoal 
widely used for gas-masks. In 1918 the United States military 
authorities had an extensive organization for securing large 
quantities of this charcoal in the Philippines. Locally these 
shells have been much used as fuel for drying copra. 
In the internal commerce of the Philippines the most im- 
portant product of the coconut palm, after the fruit and the 
derived products, food, copra, and oil, is the fermented sap or 
tuba and the alcohol distilled from it. A large number of 
palms are devoted entirely to the tuba industry. The general 
method of tapping the coconut palm in the Philippines for the 
production of tuba is as follows: The unopened inflorescences 
are selected and are bent downward slowly and gradually, this 
operation being repeated several times a day for one or two 
weeks. The tip of the inflorescence, including the tip of the 
spathe and the branches of the inflorescence, is then cut off 
with a sharp knife. In general practice the spathe is not re- 
moved, and the whole inflorescence may or may not be bound 
with string; the wounded end of the inflorescence may or may 
not be bruised to stimulate the flow of sap, but usually the cutting 
alone is relied upon to produce the flow. When the flow of sap 
commences, a bamboo receiver (bamboo joint) is placed in posi- 
tion to catch and retain the sap, as with the nipa, buri, and sugar 
palms. A thin slice is removed from the wounded end of the 
inflorescence twice each day to ensure a continued flow. 
The average daily yield of sap from properly managed trees 
was found by Gibbs * to be about 1.4 liters, and it is estimated 

* Philippine Journal of Science, Section A, Vol. 6 (1911), page 157. 
