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Product Finder: Saw Palmetto > Care and Cultivation |
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Saw Palmetto
This dwarf palm grows to the north of the Everglades in Florida, normally in dense pine forests, tropical heat and sandy soil being its favourite territory. Alfred Vogel discovered the Saw Palm during his exploration of the Americas in the 1950s and learned that the Native Americans in Florida, the Seminole, had used the fruit of saw palmetto for hundreds of years for many conditions including urinary problems and bladder infections.
Saw Palmetto (Sabal serrulata) grows from a creeping rhizome. Its leafstalks are between 1 and 1.5 metres in length and have a jagged edge from which the sharply-edged leaves fan out in segments of 18 and 24 leaves. The Latin word, serrulata means "little saw" referring to the leaves. The individual deep purple to black berries are about the size of olives.
Experience has shown that the most effective means of obtaining a good, healthy crop is carefully to select a natural cultivation and devote time and energy to ensuring that the wild palms have room to grow and are not overgrown by forest or other plants. To this end, roughly one square kilometre of fields are fenced off and laid out to ensure that cultivation takes place far away from industrial areas and citrus plantations, which could be a source of contamination.
When the fruit of the Saw Palm is ripe, the harvest workers hand pick the berries in searing temperatures ranging from 35 to 42 degrees centigrade. There are normally 50 to 100 berries on each plant. Following harvest, moisture is carefully removed to ensure that they are not subject to deterioration during their journey to Europe. They are then packed into sacks to begin their journey, the end result of which is A.Vogel Saw Palmetto products.
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