Cool Palm Trees - Quite different!

Or is it a Palm Being Devoured?

St. Augustine Florida has a balmy, humid climate.

• That's one reason this sort of Factually Interesting Thing can happen, they say.
• This unusual companionship on the property of Bar Harbor Cheesecake Company. In the town's Historic District.

An oak tree began growing. Later, a palm seed made its way aside the young oak. That palm tree also took root and began to grow.

While First Growing, palm trunks reach a maximal steady-state width.

• Once that's achieved, they begin their upward growth. Then there's no more added width to their trunk.
• While an oak gains trunk girth with each year. Adding on those yearly tree rings you've likely heard about. Which helps scientists determine their age & experiences through the years.

As its trunk grew wider, this oak began "enveloping" areas of the palm's trunk! Incorporating that Part of the Palm into it's own trunk body.

The Oak Surrounds the Lower Palm Trunk!

Endemic to islands in the Seychelles, this Palm Tree Grows Fruit that's generated story-telling traditions through the years!

Several legends are attached to this largest of palm tree fruits. That's factual - Coco de Mer palm fruit is the biggest seed in the entire plant kingdom!

Also called the Love Nut & Sea Coconut. It's officially Lodoicea maldivica.

• The flesh of this strange Palm Tree's fruit is edible & very dense.
•  Making it a heavy, heavy seed.
• See its weird shape...

Sometimes Called the Double Coconut - Some Think it's Reminiscent of a Body Area.

The claim arose that the genus Lodicea honored French King Louis XV.

Seems more likely it was named for Laodice, the legendary & lovely princess of Troy.

Laodices of Troy Disguised Herself as Iris

Coco de Mer has separate male & female trees.

The male flowers must get pollen transferred to female flowers on a nearby Coco de Mer. Generated by wind pollination & likely assisted by snails & geckos. Animals who enjoy Coco de Mer flowers.

• Inflorescences (Limbs that produce flowers) on the shorter female palm have the largest blooms of the palm world!
• Taller male palms produce a 6ft/1.83m long catkin flowered inflorescence. Which is 3in/91.4cm thick. 
• Scattered tiny star-like flowers grow on the surface of the male inflorescence.

Below is a look at the male inflorescence. Then remember the look of the fruit produced. Both imitating human body parts.

You'll perhaps figure out other legends for this palm!

Yes - This is True!

Imagine walking leisurely through a nice trail

• In southern Belize
• Along the tropical coast of Mexico.
• On the northern coast of Honduras

Up ahead you see crowns of palm fronds. Thinking you'll be heading through a nice palmy grove at the edge of the rainforest!

Nice view of these palms from afar.
But watch out - because this Choco Palm is armed!

BUT WAIT!

As you get closer, it gets scary. Yikes, Astrocaryum mexicanum has a million spikes!!

DANGEROUS PALM TREE!

Zombies have been a thing lately.

Lots of shows & flicks with zombies attacking & scaring the life out of everybody. Have you seen any? We've watched a few.

Well, here's another to compare:

• Meet the Zombie Palm: Zombia antillarum.
• Native to Hispaniola. It clusters out and spreads with multiple stems and palmate fronds.
• It also has horrifying spines! But only pointing downward along its matted trunks.

A Zombie Palm Tree Has Been Set Loose!

The genus part of the scientific name - "Zombia" - comes from the Haitian Creole language, for how Haitians call this palm.

In that Official Language of Haiti, the people call it latanier zombi. Which means Ghost Palm. Something else that makes it unusually scarier still!

But added to that eerie name is even more. It produces what's described as a "ghostly" white fruit!

Zombies and ghosts! Yikes, but kind-of cool for palm trees!

Scary palm spikes on the trunk of Zombia antillarum
That's Certainly Unnerving!