Tapping Kithul Palm

Entry by Blair Rynearson

April, 2017

Virtually every visit to a home in the Sinharaja area involves a cup of tea. The tea is almost always served plain, accompanied by a large, jagged brown block of kithul sugar, or kithul “hakuru” (called jaggery in English). I don’t have much of sweet tooth and the thought of eating a large white sugar cube disgusts me. But kithul hakuru is different. It’s prepared by boiling down sap from the fishtail palm (Caryota urens or "kithul" in Sinhalese) and has woody, smoky and almost savory notes. There are four varieties of hakuru in Sri Lanka: Pol hakuru - made from flower of coconut trees (Cocos nucifera), thal hakuru - made from the flower of palmyra trees (Borassus flabellifer), ukk hakuru – made from sugar cane (Saccharum spp), and kithul hakuru.  Most Sri Lankan’s acknowledge kithul hakuru as superior, and it is an essential ingredient in many local sweets and foods.

Before tea took its place as the dominant income stream in the Sinharaja area, most households earned the larger part of their income from production of kithul sugar and rubber. Women were responsible for collecting the rubber, while the men dedicated themselves to tapping kithuls. The communities surrounding the Sinharaja reserve are nationally renowned for their kithul tappers, men who make their livelihood by climbing the tall kithul palms to harvest the sap from the flowers. It is not an easy way to earn a wage.

Aside from a handful of kithul palms planted in local tree gardens, most of the trees are scattered throughout the lowland wet forest. They are typically found in the subcanopy, located along forest fringes and in gaps. This means that tappers have to walk many miles daily between their home and the location of the trees. To ensure that the flower does not heal over the incisions made for draining the sap, kithul palms must be tapped twice per day. Were the the flower to heal over the cut, the flow of sap stops. This means that rain or shine, sick or healthy, the kithul climbers must go to tap.

A young kithul palm (Caryota urens) planted in a local homegarden

Once a mature flowering kithul has been identified, it requires preparation for tapping. The first step is installing the ladder. These ladders generally consist of two large saplings running parallel to the trunk of the palm. At two to three feet intervals, the saplings are secured to the trunk with vines that serve as rungs, most commonly using the stem of a pitcher plant known locally as “bandula” (Nepenthes distallatoria). A mature kithul can reach twenty meters in height and installation of the ladders is time consuming. They are repaired and replaced when the vines dry out and start to crack.

A kithul tapper installing a ladder made from a sapling secured to the kithul by a bandula vine

A local tapper ascending the ladder on a mature kithul

Who gets to tap what tree is something of a mystery. It seems that different families have established territories. These territories existed well before the foundation of the Sinharaja reserve. And up until this year, Sinharaja has respected this tradition, allowing adjacent communities to tap trees in the reserve. I have heard that starting next year they plan to suspend this right.

After the ladder is installed, the flower is prepared for tapping. By flower, I refer to a massive inflorescence that can be up to five meters in length. The first time a kithul flowers it produces its largest inflorescence. Subsequent inflorescences decrease in size until the death of the palm. A kithul can produce up to seven inflorescences in it’s lifetime.

A kithul tapper descending a palm with a pot full of kithul ra

To prepare the flower for tapping the rachis are stacked against each other and tightly wrapped together with a vine. Some tappers make a poultice from a mixture of plants purported to stimulate production of sap that is applied before wrapping the flowers. The plant species used in this concoction is a well-kept secret. Once wrapped, the terminus of the inflorescence is situated so that sap will drain into a pot suspended below. These pots are just the right size to collect a half a day worth of sap. Twice a day the tapper then climbs the tree, barefoot and without a harness, retrieves the full pot and puts an empty one in its place. The full pot is then secured around the handle of the sheathed kithul knife, where it dangles as the tapper descends the tree. 

The knife used to tap the flower is treated as a sacred tool. It is thin, light and the razor-sharp blade is frequently honed on the branch of a hardwood tree. A tapper friend in the community has repeatedly told us a story involving a university professor using his kithul knife to cut wire! It occurred some twenty years ago, but the indignation persists. The sharpness of the blade is important for shaving razor thin pieces from the flower. Skilled cutters can prolong the duration of tapping a flower by cutting less.

Knife used to cut the kithul flowers and its sheath

 
Once exposed to the air, the unprocessed kithul sap starts fermentation immediately. If left for 24 hours, it turns into what is referred to as “kithul ra” in Sinhala, or “kithul toddy” in English. If I may inject my opinion into this blog – it’s delicious. Although production and sale of kithul toddy is illegal, it does occur. But most kithul sap harvested in the Sinharaja area is destined to become sugar. And this requires rapid cessation of fermentation to prevent the wild yeast from consuming the sap’s sugars.

A pot full of kithul ra

 

Pouring a cup full of still fermenting, fresh ra

To achieve this, the local people have discovered tree barks that arrest fermentation. The most commonly used species are two dipterocarps, Nawada (Shorea stipularis) and Hal (Vateria copalifera). Bark is stripped from the tree, and the inner layer is peeled and placed into the fermenting kithul ra. Local people say that this harvest of bark is generally non-lethal. Once the fermentation has slowed, the sap is stored until there is sufficient volume to fill a large pot specifically used in the production of kithul sugar. The sap is slowly heated over a fire, which can take more than a day and requires a great deal of firewood (this is what imparts the characteristic smoky flavor). 

Peeling bark of Nawata (Shorea stipularis) which is used to arrest fermentation of kithul sap

Slowly cooking kithul sap almost ready to become penni

The first stage of kithul sugar is reducing the watery sap to a thick brown syrup known as penni. This boiling process takes many hours, often a full day. Penni is used in many desserts and foods throughout Sri Lanka, the most ubiquitous being “kiri-penni,” creamy buffalo yogurt drizzled with kithul syrup. To obtain one liter of penni, you need roughly 8 to 10 liters of kithul sap. If penni is not the desired product, cooking is continued until the syrup reduces to a consistency suitable for making hakuru. When ready, it is poured into molds made from half coconut shells and allowed to crystallize. The result is a dome of brown kithul sugar, the unit by which hakuru is typically sold.

Hakuru is cast in a coconut shell

In the Pitakele area, kithul tapping is a dying tradition. Most of the tappers that remain in the community are men over forty years old. And many other men that formerly tapped trees now devote themselves to planting and harvesting tea, which is an undeniably safer, and more lucrative livelihood. Many people tapping trees now do so primarily for personal consumption of kithul ra, penni and hakuru. What does this mean for Sri Lanka’s future supply of kithul sugar?  Unless there’s a dramatic increase in price, supply may dwindle. People will have to start eating their buffalo yogurt with just plain sugar.