OIL PALM AND PALM KERNEL INDUSTRY 465 



situated really within the area of the natural distribution of the Oil 

 Palm. The Oil Palm, however, needs a good deal of light for its 

 development, and those trees seen in the heavy forest are very tall, 

 often over 100 feet high, with comparatively short leaves and a small 

 number of them forming the crown of the tree (see illustration 102). 

 On the other hand, wherever a clearing has been made in the forest, 

 for instance near Awowo, the older Oil Palms are shorter in stem, 

 often being not more than 20 feet in height. Another instance of this 

 is seen in the farms near Badagry, where the trees are often only 

 15 to 20 feet high, and the stem itself only 10 feet in length. In each 

 of these cases it will be noticed that the trees are standing quite free, 

 with no overhanging vegetation. From the first they have been in 

 this position, and the leaves have had room to spread almost 20 feet 

 all round, thus giving the tree the maximum amount of moisture and 

 other food material. 



Amongst these trees. Oil Palm seedlings will be seen to spread out 

 over the ground almost at once, even when only the secondary and 

 tertiary leaves have grown. In the forest, however, the leaves go 

 almost straight up, and only after some years have elapsed spread more 

 as they dominate, or try to overgrow, other seedling forest trees. 



2. Botanical Description of Tree, Fruit, etc. — An Oil Palm 

 starts male flowers when three years old, and these are borne one to 

 three years before the female flowers appear. The male and female 

 flowers are both found on the same tree, the male above the female 

 in the axils of the leaves. There are two cycles of leaves younger 

 than the female flower. The Oil Palm fruit is formed first by the 

 kernel surrounded by shell, then the fibrous pulp containing the palm 

 oil. The ripe fruit is of a brilliant brick-red colour, the unripe fruit being 

 always black at the point and only red near the base, where it is covered 

 by neighbouring fruits. When ripe they fall from the bunch, and it is 

 especially noticeable that each bunch of fruit grows out of alternate 

 leaf axils, alternating also with the whorls or cycles of growth 

 (illustration 60). 



The female flowers are very minute, and in the earlier years each 

 bunch is rather smaller than a man's hand. The centre of the flower 

 is orange, coloured with a bluish tip, and scarcely lasts a week. On 

 the other hand, the male inflorescence is like a compact horse's tail, 

 composed of closely packed poUenated stamens. Owing to the different 

 years in which the male and female inflorescence appear, it is probable 

 that cross-fertilization takes place. 



2a. Distribution of the Oil Palm. — The Oil Palm is found from 

 Sierra Leone to Lake Chad, down to Ambriz, and eastward to the 

 borders of German East Africa. 



The Palm Belt, according to Millbourne, is 3,000 miles in length, 

 and varies from 150 to 300 miles in width. 



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