The skin is thin, the flesh yellow to light-orange, sweet, occasionally with a trace of bitterness, dry and mealy. Some fruits are seedless. Rarely one finds 2 fused seeds. This useful palm is apparently indigenous to Amazonian areas of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, but it has been cultivated and distributed by Indians from ancient times and is so commonly naturalized as an escape that its natural boundaries are obscure. Of prehistoric introduction into Costa Rica, it is plentiful in a seemingly wild state of the Atlantic side of that country and also much cultivated.
Every Indian dwelling has a patch of pejibaye palms.
The palm has also been planted as partial shade for coffee. It is not as common anywhere else in Central America, though it is fairly abundant in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, and has long been grown in commercial plots in Panama to furnish fruits for local markets. In Colombia and Peru, great quantities of the fruits appear in the markets and vendors sell them along the streets. There are large stands of this palm in the Orinoco region of Venezuela and equatorial Brazil. The Indians of Colombia and Ecuador hold festivals when the pejibayes are in season, though in the latter country the fruits are valued more as feed for livestock than as food for humans.