Sago, and starchy matter allied to it, is obtained from many palms.  It is contained in the cellular tissue of the stem, and is separated by bruising and elutriation.  From the soft stem of Cycas circinalis, a kind of sago is produced in the East and West Indies.  The finest is, however, procured from the stems of Sagus laevis (S. inermis, of Roxburgh), a native of Borneo and Sumatra; and Arenga saccharifera, or Gomutus saccharifus, of Rumphius.  The Saguerus Rumphii, or Metroxylon Sagus, which is found in the Eastern Islands of the Indian Ocean, yields a feculent matter.  After the starchy substance is washed out of the stems of these palms, it is then granulated so as to form sago.  The last-mentioned palm also furnishes a large supply of sugar.  Sago as well as sugar, and a kind of palm wine, are procured from Caryota urens.

In China sago is obtained from Rhapis flabelliformis, a dwarfish palm; and some sago is made from it for native use in Travancore, Mysore, and Wynaad, and the jungles in the East Indies.

The trunk of the sago palm is five or six feet round, and it grows to the height of about 20 feet.  It can only be propagated by seed.  It flourishes best in bogs and swampy marshes; a good plantation being often a bog, knee deep.  The pith producing the sago is seldom of use till the tree is fourteen or fifteen years old; and the tree does not live longer than thirty years.  Mr. Crawfurd says there are four varieties of this palm; the cultivated, the wild, one distinguished by long spines on the branches, and a fourth destitute of these spines, and called by the natives female sago.  This and the cultivated species afford the best farina; the spiny variety, which has a slender trunk, and the wild tree, yield but an inferior quality of sago.  The farinaceous matter afforded by each plant is very considerable, 500 lbs. being a frequent quantity, while 300 lbs. may be taken as the common average produce of each tree.

Supposing the plants set at a distance of ten feet apart, an acre would contain 435 trees, which, on coming to maturity in fifteen years, would yield at the before-mentioned rate 120,500 lbs. annually of farinaceous matter.  The sago meal, in its raw state, will keep good about a month.  The Malays and natives of the Eastern Islands, with whom it forms the chief article of sustenance, partially bake it in earthenware moulds into small hard cakes, which will keep for a considerable time.  In Java the word “saga” signifies bread.  The sago palm (Metroxylon Sagus) is one of the smallest of its tribe, seldom reaching to more than 30 feet in height, and grows only in a region extending west to Celebes and Borneo, north to Mindanao, south to Timor, and east to Papua.  Ceram is its chief seat, and there large forests of it are found.  The edible farina is the central pith, which varies considerably in different trees, and as to the time required for its attaining proper maturity.  It is eaten by the natives in the form of pottage.  A farina of an inferior kind is supplied by the Gomuti palm (Borassus gomutus), another tree peculiar to the Eastern Archipelago growing in the valleys of hilly tracts.