Toddy; Toddy Palm

Borassus flabellifer is also known as the Palmyra palm or sugar palm. It’s a tall, very slow-growing tree that used to be widespread in the low-lying areas of tropical southeast Asia. There are still palms growing in ones and twos by rice fields in southern Burma, for example in Mon and Karen States and in Tenasserim. The tree is tapped for its sweet sap, the region’s first (pre-sugarcane) plant source for sugar. The sap is often fermented into an alcoholic drink known as toddy or distilled into liquor called arak, especially in rural villages.