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Fascinating Herbs: Saw Palmetto > Care and Cultivation
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The Cultivation Story
Alfred
Vogel discovered the Saw Palm during his exploration
of the Americas in the 1950s and learned that
the Native Americans in Florida, the Seminole,
had used the fruit of saw palmetto for hundreds
of years for many conditions such as the onset
of prostate enlargement and bladder infections.
This dwarf palm (Saw Palmetto or Sabal serrulata)
grows exclusively to the north of the Everglades
in Florida, normally in dense pine forests, tropical
heat and sandy soil being its favourite territory.
Experience has shown that the most effective means
of obtaining a good, healthy crop is carefully
to select a natural cultivation and devote time
and energy to ensuring that the wild palms have
room to grow and are not overgrown by forest or
other plants. To this end, roughly one square
kilometre of fields are fenced off and laid out
to ensure that organic cultivation takes place
far away from industrial areas and citrus plantations,
which could be a source of contamination.
When the fruit of the Saw Palm is ripe, the harvest
workers hand pick the oily berries in searing temperatures
ranging from 35 to 42 degrees centigrade. There
are normally 50 to 100 berries on each plant.
The fully developed berries are almost as big
as olives but are not really edible.
Following
harvest, moisture is carefully removed to ensure
that they are not subject to deterioration during
their journey to Switzerland and they are then
packed into sacks to begin their journey, the
end result of which is the natural remedy, A.Vogel Saw
Palmetto oily capsules.
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