What are all those trees?

Malaysia is covered with palm trees. Duh! you'd say. We live in the tropics! But, these are different. These trees are planted in rows, kinda like the rows of pine trees you see planted in Alabama along the highway. But why?

Because, these are oil palm trees! They use the fruit from these trees to make palm oil, and palm kernel oil. Since I get to pass these cool forests often on my way to the airport I thought I'd take some pics and show you what it's all about! (Plus I was curious too!)

First, the workers cut down the leaf stalk to get to the bundles of palm seeds. The palm trees are covered in dangerous spikes everywhere so the workers must wear longsleeves, gloves, hats, long pants and the like. They also take great care not to touch the palm fruit, as it also has spikes imbedded in it.

The embassy had a palm oil tree right next to the volleyball court. Everytime the volleyball went into the tree the ball popped! Tough spikes!

The palm leaves are piled between the trees for 'fertilizer', though I think they make better breeding grounds for snakes and monitor lizards than fertlizer.

It doesn't make for a pretty grove, that's for sure.

Here's a pic of a bundle of palm fruit. The spikes look soft, but they're not!

Here you can see the indentation from the leafstalk. The fruit grows around it. After the leafstalk is cut the worker uses a different tool with a spike to pick it up, again, being careful not to touch it.

The fruit is used to make 2 different kinds of oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil. The red outer flesh is used to make the palm oil.You can get the oil out by pressing the flesh or by boiling it. It's used for soaps, and cosmetics and biodiesel. With further processing it can also be used as a cooking oil. The kernel within can be eaten, and processed for a 'leaner' oil for other uses.

As you drive to the airport you can see piles of these fruit waiting to be taken to the processing plants.

I actually had to research some of this stuff for the blog. Here are two of the sites I gathered my info from. Notice how the Malaysia site has everything figured out and nice? (Disclaimer: This blog is the ONLY place where I use Wiki for a source!!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil

http://www.etawau.com/OilPalm/PalmOil.htm