Talipot
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Talipot. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
TALIPAT, or TALIPUT, the Corypha umbraculifera, a palm tree, native of Ceylon and the Malabar coast, and cultivated in Bengal and Burma. It has a tall, cylindrical stem, with a soft rind and soft pink internal pith, both formed of vascular bundles. The leaves are in a cluster at the top of the stem, and are fan-shaped. A tree at Peradeniya, in Ceylon, was described in the "Indian Agriculturist" for November, 1873, as having a stem 84 feet high, terminated by a flower panicle of 20 feet, making 104 feet in all, the girth of the stem 3 feet from the ground round the persistent bases of the leaves was 13 feet 4 inches; at 21 feet from the ground 8 feet 3 inches; the leaves were about 10 feet in diameter, and the age of the tree about 40 years. The pith is made into a kind of sago, the leaves are written upon by the natives with a steel stylus; they are, moreover, made into fans, ns, mats, and umbrellas.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an important palm, native in Ceylon and on the Malabar coast. This palm is of peculiar growth. Until the plant is about thirty years old the leaves all spring from a point near the ground. The palm then suddenly shoots up, producing a straight, cylindrical trunk sixty or seventy feet high, crowned with a pyramid of leaves thirty feet high. The blade of the leaf is circular or elliptical, attaining a diameter of even thirteen feet. The blade is borne on a stalk six or seven feet long. Having attained its height the tree blossoms, producing a crop of yellowish flowers so offensive that the tree is frequently felled at this stage. The fruit matures in about fourteen months; then the tree dies. The leaves are used for thatching houses, making umbrellas, fans, and even writing paper. One of these gigantic leaves is capable of sheltering ten people from the rain. The Ceylon native of rank is preceded by slaves carrying these leaves as a sign of their master's rank.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The botany in both accounts still stands: Corypha umbraculifera grows for decades as a rosette of huge fan leaves, then throws up a single enormous flowering panicle and dies, exactly as Aiton's described in 1910 — one of the clearest cases of monocarpic ("once-flowering") habit in the palm family, and its branched inflorescence is reckoned among the largest of any plant. What has gone is the everyday use Collier's reported in 1921: leaves "written upon by the natives with a steel stylus" are no longer a working writing medium, and the ola-leaf manuscripts of Sri Lanka and South India are now conservation objects in temple and museum collections rather than stationery. The tree survives mainly as a planted ornamental and temple specimen, including in the botanic gardens at Peradeniya that Collier's cited, and is scarce as a truly wild plant. The old accounts read as accurately today as when they were written.
Written for this edition, 2026.