Botanists Discover Giant, Self-Destructing Palm Tree
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 01.18.08
In case you're wondering, no, that isn't a typo: A team of botanists from London's Kew Gardens has discovered a new species of "self-destructing" palm in Madagascar; the tree is so large that it is clearly visible in satellite images. The long-lived, 60 foot high palm - named Tahina spectabilis (Malagasy for "blessed" or "to be protected") - had never before been seen flowering until this past year, when the botanists caught a glimpse of its spectacular flowering pattern.
"At first there's only a very long shoot like asparagus from the top of the tree and then, a few weeks later, this unique shoot starts to spread. At the end of this process you can have something like a Christmas tree," said Mijoro Rakotoarinivo. She and her colleagues found that the tree expended so much energy flowering that it eventually died - or "self-destructed".
They identified 92 individual palms, all located in the same remote area of the island nation. Efforts are now underway to ensure the plant's long-term survival; the botanists will support the villagers' conservation measures and help them sell seeds to generate some much-needed income
Via ::BBC News: Giant palm tree puzzles botanists (news website)
See also: ::Can this Tree Save the World? Shiny Plants as Solution to Climate Change, ::The 10 Most Magnificent Trees
This is fascinating, but it may also be valuable information. The cycle of this tree may be an important factor in the wider ecosystem, and if we're only now discovering it and its cycle, we may now have information that resolves questions about otherwise-unexplainable phenomena in that ecosystem. Now we have another piece of periodic behavior, which may help us resolve questions about phenomena that before may have been seen to be unresovable, having no pattern. I'm no math person but I know sometimes very broad patterns may be invisible until you look hard enough. This is why biodiversity is important and must be preserved.
For anyone interested in Madagascar's environment and ongoing news there, here's a link to the Madagascar Network, a listerv I moderate: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/madagascar_network/
Another plant that does this is bamboo.
After it flowers, it will die off. Crazy part is, each species of bamboo has a different # of years between flowering cycles. And when that time is up, every specimen all over the world flower at the same time and then die. It can be a major problem for the panda bear since that is mostly what it eats and if its local fav. species blooms and dies, it may have a hard time finding food and starve as well.
Now imagine all the other undiscovered species in the rainforest...
It doesn't look "giant" nor does sixty feet seem "giant" just big. I guess my perception of Palm trees is off.
wow..terrific!!
This article misses the entire point fo the story
The flowering cycle is not new to science...there are more than a few palms that will flower and then die at the end of the flowering cycle.
The term used to describe this is monocarpic.
What IS new is that this specie is completely new to science.
It's flowering cycle is not.
This article misses the entire point fo the story
The flowering cycle is not new to science...there are more than a few palms that will flower and then die at the end of the flowering cycle.
The term used to describe this is monocarpic.
What IS new is that this specie is completely new to science.
It's flowering cycle is not.