Cultural Symbolism
The palmyra tree is the official tree of Tamil Nadu. Highly respected in Tamil culture, it is called "karpaha Veruksham" ("celestial tree") because all its parts without exception have a use. Panaiveriyamman, named after panai, the Tamil name for the Palmyra palm, is an ancient tree deity related to fertility linked to this palm. This deity is also known as Taalavaasini, a name that further relates her to all types of palms.
The Asian palmyra palm is a symbol of Cambodia. It grows near the Angkor Wat temple and is a very common palms, where it found all over the country. Palmyra tree is also symbol of South Sulawesi province (Indonesia).
The palm is also common in Thailand, especially in the northeast or Isaan provinces, where it is a prevailing part of the landscape.
This plant has captured the imagination of Bengalis in the words of Rabindranth Tagore whose nursery rhyme 'Taal Gaach ek Paye daariye' (তাল গাছ এক পায়ে দাড়িয়ে..) in Sahaj Path (সহজ পাঠ) is a staple reading material in most schools in West Bengal
Read more about this topic: Borassus Flabellifer
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“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
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