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| Interesting Facts About The Chilean Palm |
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 The Chilean Palm (Kan-Kan for the native inhabitants) is one of the two native species of Palms in Chile (the other one is Chonta from Juan Fernández island).
The main difference between this and other native Chilean trees is that the Chilean Palm is endemic, which means that it only grows naturally in this country.
It is the Palm that grows closest to Antartica and lives longer than any other (it takes 300 years to reach 25-30 meters of height and a base diameter of 70 cm). It can live up to 2,000 years and it reaches maturity at 60 years.
Palms are big herbs, not trees, and their trunk is made of fibers, not wood. The trunk of the Chilean Palm is very strong and the widest of all the Palms.
Ocoa is the area with the highest concentration of them, and UNESCO declared it Reserve of the Biosphere.
There is one Palm in London, in the royal botanic gardens in Kew. This is the highest Chilean Palm that grows under a roof. It was planted by Queen Victoria in the era of Charles Darwin.
They have some fruits, which are used for bakery or consumed directly.
Their scientific name is "Jubaea chilensis“. Jubaea is in honor of the king of Numidia, a wise man who knew of botany and geography and killed himself when his kingdom (in the north of Africa) was conquered by the Romans. Chilensis comes from its precedence.
Jubaea chilensis has many qualities, which are used in the design of parks and gardens; beauty, tolerance, and good growth in shade (or semi-shaded) areas, tolerance of other species, adaptability to different climates (from the Chilean dry north to the wet areas near Valdivia), resistance to droughts, pests and air pollution.
You can calculate the age of each Palm by counting the scars on the leaves (7 or 8 form on each Palm every year) and dividing that number by 8.
An adult Palm can produce from 3 to 12 bunches with 900 fruits each.
In natural ecosystems their fruits are an important source of food for some animals, especially the “Degu”.
Its honey was one of the main sources of sugar during the Colony (XIX Century). It was necessary to cut down the tree to obtain it, so this was one of the main factors for the drastic reduction in their number.
In the past they were in every valley of Central Chile but, because of the extraction of honey, they are now under threat of extinction. Its population declined from 5,000,000 to only 120,000.
CONAF (the Chilean National Corporation for the Protection of Trees) is in charge of controlling the consumption of the Palm honey without threatening the species.
It has been the inspiration for many artists. Onofre Jarpa painted their beauty and Gabriela Mistral wrote some poems inspired by them.
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