Pandanus

spp.

Screw pine (E); Palma de Tornillo (C). Screw pines are rarely cultivated in Panama. Ripe fruits may be eaten raw, or cooked for storage and later use. Uncooked fruits are quite tasty; to extract the juice and pulp from the tough fibers is difficult (!). Boiled fruits are a squash-like vegetable often mixed with grated coconut meat. Pandanus flour and paste enveloped with Pandanus leaf-rolls may be stored for years. Fruits to be made into paste are cooked for a long time in an earth oven and then scraped. The pulp is collected on leaves, dried to a sticky consistency, and then rolled into the leaves. To make flour, fruits are cooked for only one hour, pounded, sun dried, and further dried over heated rocks. The resulting dry cakes are pounded to a coarse consistency. The flour has more fibers and more calories than the paste. Calcium oxalate crystals present in some varieties are destroyed by cooking. Apical meristems of tender white developing leaves are edible, like the stems and leaves, when white and tender. Green leaves are used to wrap fish to be cooked. Root tips have sustained fiber for temporary cordage, as do leafe strips. During World War II, American Armed Forces in the Gilbert Islands used Pandanus trunks, split down the middle for temporary construction. All parts of Pandanus are combustible when dry, but the apical ends of discarded drupes provide a very hot and relatively smokeless fuel, like coconut shells. A substitute for cigarette paper is provided by the thin eipdermis of the leaves. Male inflorescences are used to scent coconut oil.