raphia

• WordNet 3.6
  • n Raphia feather palm of tropical Africa and Madagascar and Central and South America widely grown for commercial purposes
  • n raphia leaf fibers of the raffia palm tree; used to make baskets and mats etc.
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• • n raphia A genus of palms of the tribe Lepidocaryeæ, type of the subtribe Raphieæ (which is distinguished from the true ratan-palms, Calameæ, by a completely three-celled ovary). It is characterized by pinnately divided leaves crowning an erect and robust trunk, and by a fruit which becomes one-celled, is beaked with the three terminal stigmas, and has a thick pericarp tessellated with overlapping scales, spongy within and containing a single oblong furrowed seed with very hard osseous albumen. There are 5 species, natives of tropical Africa and Madagascar, with one, R. tædigera, the jupati-palm (which see), native in America from the mouths of the Amazon to Nicaragua. All inhabit low swampy lands and banks near tide-water. Their trunks are unarmed and of little height, but their leaves are spiny and often over 50 feet in length, the entire tree becoming thus 60 or 70 feet in height to their erect tips. The large pendulous flower-spikes reach 6 feet in length, contain flowers of both sexes, and have their numerous branches set in two opposite rows, their flower-bearing branchlets resembling flattened catkins. In fruit the spike sometimes becomes 15 feet long, and weighs 200 or even 300 pounds, bearing numerous egglike brown and hard fruits often used as ornaments. R. Ruffia, which produces the largest spadices, is known as the raffia-palm. (See raffia.) R. vinifera supplies the toddy of western tropical Africa, and its leafstalks are used in various ways.
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• • n Raphia rā′fi-a a genus of handsome pinnately-leaved palms.
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