Dr. Tom Poulson writes in response to an earlier post titled, Nature’s Resolve Discovered-The Real Heart of the Cabbage Palm. “The cabbage palm with almost all of its lower trunk missing is interesting. Unlike other trees, like oaks, palms grow only from the tip so, if you harvest the “heart” of the palm you kill it.
You cannot count growth rings in a palm because the trunk never grows in diameter!! So the width of the trunk reflects how good growing conditions were in that year. In drought years the trunk is narrow for example.
If you look at a cross section you see conducting vessels for water and nutrients throughout the trunk (not just at the growing periphery as in other trees). That is why the pictured palm survives. It would be interesting to know if all the fronds at the top are doing well. If so then the conducting vessels must spiral so that all parts of the crown are connected to vessels at any one point. This is a good
safety feature as shown by the survival of the palm pictured.”
Dr. Tom Poulson is the
Senior Scientist of the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation and the Florida Environmental Institute. I have enjoyed many days with Tom and his wife Liz teaching me about natures wonders. Tom’s passion for life is contagious and my two sons never miss an opportunity to hike with Dr. Tom
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That’s a cool looking fish , I used to do a lot of spelunking in college , we saw cave crickets and salamanders but no blind fish .
Dudley
Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder’n bout this issue,so thanks for posting