Abstract
One of the few palms with a vine-like growth habit, this palm occurs in various forms in upland forest and along water courses and in seasonally-flooded savannas. Widely distributed in the Amazon and Orinoco Basins, the main use of this palm is to obtain strips from the stem to weave baskets and sleeve-like devices for squeezing manioc dough. Strips from the stem are still occasionally used to bind tobacco leaves into salami-like rolls; some indigenous groups also wrap the strips around their blowgun tubes to secure them and as well as to attach arrow points. The fruits are occasionally eaten or used for fish bait.
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Smith, N. (2015). Desmoncus polyacanthos . In: Palms and People in the Amazon. Geobotany Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05509-1_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05509-1_31
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