Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Harmless🍽️ Edible🪢 Cordage🏕️ Shelter

🌴 Pandanus (vacoa, screwpine)

Pandanus tectorius · Pandanacées

🌴 Tropical
🧠 To remember it"The pandanus stands tall on stilts and feeds the atoll" — right after the coconut palm, it's the second main staple plant of the Pacific islands.
Pandanus (vacoa, screwpine) — Pandanus tectorius

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Branched shrub to tree of tropical Pacific and Southeast Asian coasts, easily recognized by its aerial stilt roots supporting the trunk and long, strap-like leaves arranged in a spiral, with spiny margins. The fruit, a large globe made of dozens of pineapple-like segments (phalanges), turns yellow-orange when ripe.

  1. highly characteristic aerial stilt roots supporting the trunk
  2. long, strap-like leaves arranged in a spiral around the stems (hence the name "screwpine"), with spiny margins and midrib
  3. globular fruit made of multiple pineapple-like phalanges, yellow-orange when ripe
Size3-6 m
Floweringvariable, almost continuous fruiting in tropical climates
Habitatcoasts and sandy tropical backbeaches of the Pacific and Indian Oceans; tolerates salt spray and poor soils, often right on coastal sand or rocks

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Coastal Agave or Yucca with spiky leaves (—)none (neither is toxic to the touch)

To tell them apart: the characteristic aerial stilt roots of the pandanus are absent in agaves and yuccas, which grow in low rosettes directly on the ground without this elevated root system

🍽️ Eating it

Partsfibrous pulp at the base of each phalange of the ripe fruit, tender heart of young shoots, tips of young roots
Seasonripe fruit available almost year-round in stable equatorial climates
Tasteslightly sweet fibrous pulp, stringy texture similar to a fibrous, tangy mango

Preparation : detach the phalanges from the ripe fruit and chew or suck the sweet, fibrous base of each to extract the juice and pulp; cook the heart of young shoots as a vegetable; leaves of related aromatic species (Pandanus amaryllifolius) flavor rice and desserts in Southeast Asian cuisine

💊 Healing with it

roots and leaves used in traditional Pacific medicine to treat fever and pain

Level of evidence : traditional use — University of Hawaii at Manoa — Traditional Pacific Island Crops, Pandanus

⚠️ no known toxicity in traditional uses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • woven leaves for thatched roofs, mats, baskets, and traditional canoe sails
  • stilt-root fibers used in basketry and cordage
Sources (2)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.