Palm Sugar
Sap, collected throughout the dry season and sourced from Toddy Palms (Borassus flabellifer) introduced centuries ago from South India, is boiled down to sugar--palm sugar--by villagers, who either sell it in bulk to middlemen or form it into round bits that are later sold as 'candy'.
The sap is also consumed as a fresh or fermented beverage, and the palm fruit is eaten, as well. Wood from the Sugar/Toddy Palm is used in construction, and turned into kitchenware; the leaves are used as roofs, walls, and for handicrafts; and, the fibre ends up as brushes and brooms. The Khmer Rouge turned the wickedly sharp and serrated palm fronds (nowadays used as fuelwood), into murder weapons, beheading an untold number of Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime.
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