Saw Palmetto berries—an A.Vogel herb story

The Saw Palmetto plant grows mainly in Florida, in the southeast of the USA. Sabal serrulata, the Latin name for American Saw Palm, is found to the north of the Everglades, where the climate is hot and dry.

‘Proud princes on distant shores’ was how the great botanist Carl von Linne once described the tall, majestic palms, of which there are approximately 3,000 types worldwide. However the American Saw Palms cannot really be described in these terms as they seldom reach more than one metre.

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.

How we cultivate Saw Palmetto

Alfred Vogel discovered the Saw Palm during his exploration of the Americas in the 1950s. He learned that Native Americans in Florida, the Seminole, had used the fruit of Saw Palmetto for hundreds of years for many conditions including frequent urination and other urinary problems.

Our experience has shown that the most effective means of obtaining a good, healthy crop of Saw Palmetto is to carefully select a natural cultivation and devote time and energy in ensuring that the wild palms have room to grow and are not overgrown by the forest or other plants.

To this end, A.Vogel has fenced off about one square kilometre of fields far away from industrial areas and citrus plantations which could be a source of contamination.

At our plantations, each Saw Palm bears between 50 and 100 berries. When the fruit is ripe, berries are hand-picked in searing temperatures ranging from 35 to 42 degrees centigrade.

After harvest, moisture is carefully removed to ensure that they are not subject to deterioration during their journey to come. They are then carefully packed to begin their long journey to Europe - the end result of which is the A.Vogel Saw Palmetto product, Prostasan.

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