Management and Use

As Europeans occupied Florida and the southeastern region of the U.S., saw-palmetto presented itself as an obstacle to establishing crop fields, pastures, and homesites. The plant is adapted to fire, so simply burning areas did not remove it. Theplant had to be physically eradicated from the areas being converted to other uses. Various pieces of mechanical equipment were developed to assist in this process. The web plow and heavy duty discs were used to kill the plant (Tanner, et al. 1985), but the remains of the stems had to be raked into piles and burned. Ranchers wanting to reduce the competition with native forage grasses, or foresters preparing a site to re-plant pine trees, used roller drum choppers, pulled behind rubber-tired tractors or caterpillars, to crush the palmetto to temporarily (4 to 6 years) reduce the foliar cover of the plant.

Use of native plant species for landscaping recently has increased in popularity. Saw-palmetto is one of the plants people want to use, but landscapers have found it very difficult to transplant this species from the wild and have it survive. Consequently, nurseries specializing in native species have began to raise plants from seed to supply this market demand. Saw-palmetto is naturally drought and insect resistant, requires no fertilizer, and is a perfect plant for enviroscaping.

The fruit of saw-palmetto has been eaten by humans for centuries. Hale (1898) speculated that palmetto fruit was a staple food item for the aborigines in Florida, although the taste is reported to be repugnant. The medicinal value of the fruit has been described in the scientific literature since the 1800’s. Hale (1898) described tinctures of the fruits and crushed seeds being used for relief of prostate gland swelling and various aphrodisiac qualities. Permixon*, a pharmaceutical extract of saw-palmetto fruit, possesses antiangrogenic activity that significantly improves symptoms of human benign prostatic hypertrophy (Sultan et al. 1984; Di Silverio et al. 1992). Commercialization of the fruit has been active for several decades at least. Hilmon (1968) described an advertiser in southern Georgia wanting to purchase 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of dried fruit in 1961 for $0.12 per pound. The fruits were being processed and resold to wholesale drug manufactures.

In 1995, the economic value of saw-palmetto fruit began made the news when the price for raw fruit exceeded $3.00 per pound. Thus, a plant that has been viewed as a "pest" by many landowners, promises to supply an added economic value to this landscape. The current demand for the fruit by several European pharmaceutical companies is projected to remain strong. The fruit is processed for treatment of prostate gland swelling, just as it was a century ago. Several saw-palmetto based products are also sold in health food stores.

Back to Saw palmetto