How to Grow Pandanus

Pandanus tectorius · Also called: Screwpine, Screw pine, Hala, Te kaina, Bob, Fala, Vacoa, Pandan laut

A mature pandanus tree standing on open grass with a branching trunk held up by thick woody prop roots reaching to the ground like stilts, each branch ending in a crown of long narrow strap-like leaves arranged in a spiral.

Photo: Drew Avery, CC BY 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Pandanus is the tree that feeds people where almost nothing else will grow. It produces on pure coral sand, it stands salt spray and brackish water, it holds against wind on stilt-like prop roots, and it asks for no fertiliser and almost no care. On the low atolls of Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Tokelau it has been a staple beside coconut and swamp taro for centuries, and it is grown all along the tropical Pacific and Asian coasts. It gives two crops at once. The fruit is a head of wedge-shaped segments whose sweet fibrous bases are chewed fresh or cooked and dried into a preserved paste that keeps for a year or more, which is what carries an atoll household between seasons. The leaves are the other crop: stripped of their spines and dried, they become mats, baskets, thatch and sails, and in many places they are worth more in a year than the fruit is.

Growing Pandanus, Stage by Stage

1. Choose the site and get the land ready — Put it on the land nothing else wants, and do not try to improve the ground for it.
2. Choose your cuttings and planting material — Take branch cuttings from a named female tree whose fruit or leaves people already value.
3. Plant the cuttings — Push the cutting into the ground at the start of the rains, hold it upright, and water it until it takes.
4. Water — Water the cutting until it roots and then leave the tree alone for the rest of its life.
5. Weed the base, look after the tree and cut leaves — Clear the base, take leaves carefully without stripping the crown, and leave the prop roots alone.
6. Flowering, and which trees will feed you — The flowers are the first and only way to tell a male tree from a female one, and both have a use.
7. Watch for trouble — There is little to go wrong, and most of what does is scale insects, wind damage and people cutting too hard.
8. Harvest the fruit — Take the head when it turns from green to orange and the segments loosen, and pick it rather than letting it fall.
9. Eat it fresh, or preserve and store it for the year — Fresh fruit lasts days, and the cooked dried paste that atolls live on lasts a year or more.
10. Dry the leaves, and sell what you have — The leaf crop is the steady income, so strip, dry and flatten it properly and sell both crops for what they are.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: A healthy mature tree that flowers every year with long drooping scented creamy clusters and never sets a single fruit.

It likely means: It is a male tree. Pandanus trees are male or female, only females fruit, and a seedling gives no sign of its sex until it flowers at four to six years.

Do this: Take cuttings from a known female tree if you want fruit, since a cutting keeps the sex of its parent.

If you see: Planted cuttings that stand for months without new growth and then rot at the base or blow over.

It likely means: The cut end was planted before it had healed, the cutting was not held steady, or it was left dry while it was trying to root.

Do this: Let the cut end dry in the shade for a day or two before planting so that it heals instead of rotting.

If you see: Trees with sparse short crowns, few leaves and small or no fruit, usually near a house or a weaving group.

It likely means: Too many leaves have been cut. A tree stripped for weaving has nothing left to feed itself or its fruit with.

Do this: Take no more than about a third of the leaves from any one crown in a year.

If you see: Deep cuts on hands and forearms after handling leaves, usually running the length of the cut.

It likely means: The spines along the leaf edges and the underside of the middle rib. They are curved and sharp and catch skin at the slightest pull.

Do this: Strip the spines from every leaf as the first job after cutting it, before it is carried or bundled.

If you see: Stored dried fruit paste that has gone soft, smells musty or carries visible mould, sometimes months after it was made.

It likely means: It was not dried right through, or the store took up damp. This paste is meant to keep for a year and only does so bone dry.

Do this: Spread the pulp thin rather than thick and dry it right through, turning it so both sides finish.

If you see: Trees leaning heavily or lifted partly out of the ground after a storm, with prop roots pulled sideways.

It likely means: Wind on a tree whose prop roots have not spread far enough yet, or whose prop roots were cut.

Do this: Never cut the prop roots, since they are the whole reason this tree stands where others fall.

If you see: White or brown scaly and cottony clusters along the undersides of leaves, with sticky leaves and a sooty black growth spreading over them.

It likely means: Scale insects or mealybugs feeding on the sap. The black growth is a mould living on what they excrete rather than a disease of the tree.

Do this: Cut out and destroy badly infested leaves rather than leaving them on the tree.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your fruit and your leaves are worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Only female trees fruit, and you cannot tell until they flower.
So plant cuttings from a known female, never seed.
Let the cut end heal a day or two, then stake it upright.
Water it only while it roots. After that it needs nothing.
Put it on the coral sand. Good soil is wasted on this tree.
Never cut the prop roots. They are what hold it up in a storm.
Take no more than a third of a crown's leaves in a year.
Strip the spines the moment you cut a leaf, not later.
Cut the head when it turns orange and the segments loosen.
Dry the paste right through. It should keep a year, not a month.

Test Yourself: Identification

What is this tree standing on stilts with leaves spiralling up the stem?

When is this fruit head ready to cut?

Why do these leaves cut hands so badly, and what can be done about it?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Named kinds of pandanus differ more than in almost any crop in this library, in fruit size, sweetness, season and leaf quality, and most of them are known only on the islands that keep them. This guide cannot tell you which to plant; the older people around you can, and that knowledge is not written down anywhere else.
Timings are given in years and seasons rather than in months, because pandanus is grown across the tropical Pacific and Asia and fruiting seasons differ from island to island. Your harvest begins when the heads turn orange.
Methods of cooking the fruit and of making and drying the preserved paste are strongly local and are learned by doing. This guide describes what each step is for and leaves the method to the household that knows it.
Almost none of this crop is traded internationally, so production and yield figures barely exist for it despite the number of households it feeds. Every number here is a rough idea of scale only.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Pandanus tectorius Parkinson ex Du Roi — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Pandanus tectorius (EPPO code PADTE) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for fruit and for minor tropical crops — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Pandanus tectorius (screw pine) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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