Sugar palm tree

The sugar fan palm (Borassus flabellifer) is probably the most ubiquitous palm tree in the Cambodian landscape and no wonder-it is a tree that has intertwined itself into the local folklore. Though this beautiful palm is native to a large swath of south and southeast Asia from India eastwards to Indonesia, it is in Cambodia where it has become indelibly etched into the nation's cultural fabric. Strewn across the rural landscape, the palm is suggestive of a tropical Asian aesthete. But it also serves practical purposes. For centuries, fruits of this palm seeped in water have been boiled down in order to extract its natural sugars. Children love to suck on the palm 'fudge' made from the sugary residues. Leaves are used to weave baskets, and are also used to thatch roofs of farmer's huts. Sadly, the versatility of this palm also generated a sinister side in the 20th century. During the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s when the entire country was plunged into a reign of terror, the sharp edges of the leaf petioles were used to dispatch 'class enemies' of the totalitarian state. A tree whose mission for millenia was traditionally revered as life nourishing in a gentle Buddhist society was perverted into an unwilling accomplice of unspeakable acts of depravity. Acts that perpetrated cruelty and death. I'm sure the Khmers have forgiven the palm her passive role in past human misdeeds, but am not so sure they have forgiven those who sullied its innocence with the basest of human acts at the height of the terror. For the Khmer Rouge abused the tree as much as they used it to abuse their own kinsmen.