sago [Malay], edible starch extracted from the pithlike center of several E Asian palms (chiefly Metroxylon sagu) or sometimes of cycads. The starch is an important item in the diet in some parts of E Asia and is exported for use in foods (e.g., puddings) and for stiffening textiles. Sago is obtained by grinding the stem content of a filled mature sago palm that is beginning to flower into powder and washing the starch free. For local use it is pulverized, but for the market it is usually sieved and then heated to form granules. The florists' sago palm is not a true palm but a cycad of the American genus Zamia. Z. floridana, called wild sago or coontie, yields Florida arrowroot.

Food starch prepared from carbohydrate material stored in the trunks of several palms, chiefly Metroxylon rumphii and M. sagu, sago palms native to Indonesia. Composed of 88percnt carbohydrate, sago is a basic food of the South Pacific, where it is used in meal form to prepare soups, cakes, and puddings. Elsewhere its use in cookery is mainly as a pudding and sauce thickener. In industry it is used as a textile stiffener. The thick trunk grows to 30 ft (9 m) tall in low marshy areas. At 15 years the core of the mature trunk is engorged with starchy material. If allowed to form and ripen, the fruit absorbs the starch, leaving the stem hollow and dying. Cultivated plants thus are cut down when the flower spike appears, and the starchy pith is extracted from the stems.

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