Most palms seen in Honduras are African palms, whose nuts are used to make manteca, soap, and oil. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

By WENDY GRIFFIN 

While traveling through the North Coast, you may notice that palms frequently decorate both sides of the road.  Coconuts have the most uses, such as in handicrafts, traditional medicines and food.  However, several other palms are also important in Honduras.

In the Mosquitia, after the coconut the most economically important palm is the American palm, called ojon in Miskito.  The women in the Mosquitia process the oil nut of the ojon palm to make batana.  This hair oil, which is available at the offices of MOPAWI, reputedly prevents baldness and gray hair.  Commercially made batana shampoo is available in some natural health stores and pharmacies.

In the area around Lakatabila and Kruta, the American palm is also used as food.  The nuts are mashed in a mortar like those used to mash bananas or hull rice.  The resulting mixture is an oil nut mush.  The dish may be of African origin as it is not generally known in other parts of the Mosquitia.

Another important palm is the pejibal -- pejibaye or peach palm, known in Miskito as supa.  The supa nuts are also edible.  Among the Tawahkas they are still fermented into wine.  There used to be pejibal in the area of the Pech, but extensive logging has caused the tree to become extinct locally.  The Pech are interested in reintroducing the tree.

The pejibal was also used to make bows and arrows all over Honduras.  The Miskitos sometimes still use these bows and arrows to fish.  Ethnobotanist Paul House said the plant was cultivated, rather than being a wild plant.  Its origin is not known.

Palm species used for roofing vary greatly depending on the part of the country.  Near the wet coastal areas, one can observe the tique palm, for example, around Brus Laguna and the Gaymoreto Lagoon.  Some houses or kitchens in Brus are made of tique.  With a room made of pure dried palm leaves, it is a good idea to have the kitchen separate from the rest of the house.

The Garifunas use tique wood, which tends not to rot or be infested with termites as wall posts in their clay covered houses.  The root of the tique palm is used for making the beisaba, a small broom used in making casaba bread.  The Garifunas also use palm leaves to make house brooms.

The principal thatch palm in the Garifuna area is cohune palm, although in some communities you can still see roofs of suita.  The cohune palm is also called "thatch log" in the Bay Islands, although thatched roof houses there are almost non-existent.  In Spanish, the name of this palm is corozo -- the origin of the name of the Garifuna community Corozal (a place of many corozo palms).  However, when its leaves are used for roofing, they are called manaca.  The Garifunas make houses entirely out of manaca, even the doors, for their religious ceremony, dugu.

Corozo nuts were previously an important part of the edible oil industry in Honduras before the African palm was introduced.  Corozo produces a very hard nut.  On the Bay Islands, in Colon and Olancho people still remember cracking "co'one" (pronounced cohn).  The pay used to be Lps. 1 for an arroba (25 pounds) and it was hard work.

The cohunes behind Trujillo were an important source of income during the 1930s, as the Trujillo Railroad Company laid off workers.  Johnny Glyn's family ran a boat from Trujillo to La Blanquita in La Ceiba with corozo and coconuts for oil.

However, the high point in cohune nut exports was during World War I, as cohune nuts were used in making the charcoal filters in gas masks during this war.  Tawahkas and Miskitos along the Patuca were paid to collect nuts then.

The appreciation of cohune nut charcoal is now mostly limited to Garifunas who smoke it in bamboo pipes.  This pipe is used during the dugu ceremony, as tobacco is considered a purifying plant in some Garifuna rituals.  They believe there is a special cohune tree spirit for whom you must do a ceremony to get the nuts; otherwise, you can get cramps.

In western Honduras, the principal use of palms is to make baskets in different sizes and trivets.  The weaving technique is the same used in Kenya and Uganda.  This may indicate that the technique was brought to Santa Barbara by African descendants who worked in the mines there.

In Olancho, the most famous palm is coyol, from which coyol wine is made.  The juice collected in the tree trunk (which has been cut down) ferments in the hot sun.  Holy Week is a popular time to try it.

In spite of the wide variety of palms, most of what you see along the highway is African palm.  Chiquita and Dole experimented with it as a way to use lands where the banana disease sigatoka or flooding made banana growing problematic.  Both are expanding their plantings of African palms, as are private Honduran businessmen and cooperatives.  This palm oil is used to manufacture soap, margarine, manteca vegetable shortening, and cooking oil.  Low prices continue to plague the industry, which suffered sizeable losses after Mitch.