Bulaklak ng sasa (nipa palm flower)

BULAKLAK NG NIPA

Nipa palm flower (Nypa fruticans)

On one of my tours in Malolos, Bulacan, I was very lucky to find this blooming inflorescence of nipa palm.  Beautiful.

Captured here is the male phase of nipa antheses or the blooming of inflorescence. The bright yellow part of the flower is the stamen or the male pollinator. The female phase is beneath the orange sheaths where the ovule or female part of the flower is set to catch the falling pollens of stamen and when fertilized by pollens, the female phase would start to emerge as a ball of clustered nipa fruits. The male parts would start to dry and the growing clustered fruits turned into reddish brown and evolved into a bunch of closely clustered woody and fibrous nipa fruits. It is at this stage that the peduncle of the clustered fruits is bent down and beaten hard on regular intervals many times for a week or two before the bunch is cut off away from the peduncle to collect the sap (tuba) that would ooze and drip from the headless peduncle.  The tuba produced is very sweet and can be processed into syrup or sugar. If left to stand for days, the tuba would sour to become a vinegar called sukang sasa.

Meanwhile, if the bunch of fruits are allowed to mature and not cut off from the peduncle, the fruit would produce a nut inside that started as a tender mass similar to a buko ng niyog. This tender nut of nipa fruit is as good as kaong or buko in creamed fruit salad, or just eaten fresh as is. When fully matured, the nut would become very dense and hardened inside a tiny globular hard shell covered tightly with densely compressed husks, the outer layer is glossy and hardened almost like wood.