Heart of palm

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Heart of palm, also called palm heart, palmito, or swamp cabbage, is a vegetable harvested from the inner core and growing bud of certain palm trees (notably the coconut (Cocos nucifera), Palmito Juçara (Euterpe edulis), Açaí palm (Euterpe oleracea), sabal (Sabal spp.) and pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes) palms). It is costly because harvesting in the wild kills the tree. Heart of palm is often eaten in a salad sometimes called "millionaire's salad" and also vegetarian spreads.

An alternative to wild heart of palm are palm varieties which have undergone a process of adaptation to become a domesticated farm species. The main variety that has been domesticated is the botanical species Bactris gasipaes, known in Ecuador as “chontaduro” in Costa Rica as “pejibaye”, and in English, it is commonly called “Peach Palm.” Peach palms are self suckering, not single stemmed, and produce multiple stems, sometimes up to 40 on one plant, so harvesting several stems of palm heart from a plant is not such an ecological problem because the original palm plant can live on. Another advantage it has over other palms is that it has been selectively bred to eliminate the vicious thorns of its wild cousins. Given that harvesting is still a costly and labor intensive task, palm hearts are regarded as a delicacy. At present, Costa Rica is the primary source of fresh palm hearts in the US. During the last decade, Peach Palm has also been planted in Hawaii, and now has limited distribution on the mainland, but mostly only to the restaurant trade. The leading importer to the US trade of "Fresh Hearts of Palm" for restaurant and retail is the family owned and operated company DeKing of Hearts whose farm and packing house is located in Guácimo, Costa Rica. The fresh palm is harvested weekly and shipped to their US representative, Delite A. DeBolt in Florida, who then distributes the "Fresh Hearts of Palm" throughout the United States.

Brazil was the highest producer of uncultivated hearts of palm, but in the 1990's its quality went down. This left the market open for Ecuador to export its cultivated hearts of palm. Ecuador is now one of the main producers of hearts of palm. France is the largest importer of hearts of palm.

When harvesting the cultivated young palm, the tree is cut down and the bark is removed leaving layers of white fibers around a center core. During processing the fibers are removed leaving the center core or heart of palm. The center core is attached to a slightly more fibrous cylindrical base with a larger diameter. The entire cylindrical center core and the attached base are edible. The center core is considered more of a delicacy because of its lower fiber content.