Cabbage Palm wood uses?

[mountainm]

Given the bad winter it looks like my village has got an awful lot of dead cabbage palms about to be chopped down. Is this wood any good for carving with, or anything else for that matter?

 

[ex-member Raikey]

its not really wood is it?...

is it not just a firberous core,..??

when you say cabbage palm,....do you mean the Cordyline Australis?,..

i had a 15 year old 25 footer in my garden until the winter did it in,...

now its just a skeleton,...

 

[mountainm]

I dunno - not chopped one up to see yet. That certainly looks like it. My neighbour has a 20 footer and I wondered if I should offer to help dispose of it. But if it's fibrous mush inside then I won't bother.

 

[bmartin1uk]

I found this about its burning qualities
Wikipedia has a section about uses as food, fibre and medicine in Maori culture - funnily enough i do recall when i was doing garden maintenance in NZ and i strimmed a Cordyline leaf - it stopped the 450 Stihl brushcutter dead! Absolute git to untangle it all.
A couple of ideas, but not much info on the interweb. On one wood turning site there was a resounding 'give it a go', but no response to if they turned anything out of it in the end.
Let us know if you find any uses out of it - would love to see what the grain looks like.

 

[ex-member Raikey]

- would love to see what the grain looks like.

if you look at "Black Palmira" , for an example of how the grain looks,...but its not really a wood,..

it too, is a palm and its "grain" is more like a vertically bunched kinda thing,..but its tight enuff to be used as a solid material....(and is)

the cordilyne i chopped however, has definatley no usable structure, no density at all....

even a healthy one i trimmed a few months back is very open at the core,..

got to agree on the leaves tho,...i have the scars,...

Stu

 

[mountainm]

if you look at "Black Palmira" , for an example of how the grain looks,...but its not really a wood,..

it too, is a palm and its "grain" is more like a vertically bunched kinda thing,..but its tight enuff to be used as a solid material....(and is)

the cordilyne i chopped however, has definatley no usable structure, no density at all....

even a healthy one i trimmed a few months back is very open at the core,..

got to agree on the leaves tho,...i have the scars,...

Stu

Yeah the leaves jammed my mower and my leaf vac - wouldn't mulch.

 

[bmartin1uk]

So it looks like there might be some use in the leaves then, perhaps chucking them on your least favourite neighbours lawn?