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Palm Trees: Technically, Giant Plants · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. It's your old pals Josh and Chuck, and
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: you will have the chance to see us live in
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: person for the first time in two years, Friday, January
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: twenty one in San Francisco. Right, Chuck, that's right, we're
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: returning to the stage at Sketch Fest. We're very excited
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: about it. We can't wait to see everyone. It is
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a VACS only show. Bring your backscard. It is a
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: mask only show. Bring that mask. Can't wait to see
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a third of your faces. That's right. You can get
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: tickets at s F sketch Fest dot com and again Friday,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: January one, thirty pm Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, California.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: We will see you there. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Chuck, Chuck
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: A Luck Bryant. This is gonna be a good one.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I can tell by your nickname, Chuck. And this is
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know the podcast the podcast. Oh nice?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Was that off the cuff? Do you have a written
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: on your nose? It was off the cuff And that's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: probably about as funny as this one's gonna get. There's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: not a lot of room for jokes in here. But
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: but Chuck, this is the topic that I didn't know.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I wanted to know more about. Oh really, I had
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: no idea when you when you when you threw out
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: palm trees palms, I genuinely was puzzled. I'm like, I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: have to know what what triggered that, because it's not
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: something that you're walking around. I live around palm trees
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: all the time. They're all over the place and I've
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: never stopped and being like, we should do an episode
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: on palm trees. So what what caused that? Uh? I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: thought I told you no. No. So then this is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: very true is I went to Los Angeles to go
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to a sales dinner, as you know. Uh, and so
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: they were bringing a bunch of new sales people on
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: board at my heart, and they had a dinner because
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: they had not met in person, and they said, hey,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: let's get uh, let's get Chuck out here, because you know,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Josh didn't want to go. Somebody said, what about Jostin,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: like just just just chuck believe it. No. I think
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: they just didn't bother because you would have been like,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: are you serious, uh, just to come say hi and stuff.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And we were, you know, the sales people were picking
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: my brain and being inquisitive and saying, how do you
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: get your topics? How do you get your topics? And
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I literally I said, you know, you just look at
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the world around you and they come to you. And
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I looked outside in Santa Monica and it said, like
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: palm Trees, that could be an episode, and they said,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: make it an episode. There's a great ad sales impression,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: by the way, No, none of them talking like that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: In fact, it's quite opposite. Ad sales people are very smooth.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm guessing. So yeah, I mean they saw ads
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: for Pete's sake. Yeah, so they just said wow, really
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and I said yeah, and in fact, I will do it,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and I will dedicate this episode to ad sales. That's awesome.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: This is the episode that everybody wants to hear. The
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: episode on Palm Trees dedicated to ad sales. That's right. Well, no,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: they do a great job and they keep the show
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: nice and free for everybody. Oh that's right, man, that
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: is right. So hats off to the ad sales people.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: This one's for you, guys. But that is how it
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: came about. It's just sort of an example of you
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: just sort of look around sometimes. And I lived in
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: l A for quite a few years, as you know,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and I loved palm trees. I have a palm tree
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: in my backyard. And I was like, wait a minute,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of different kinds and I wish I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: knew more about them. And now I have a very
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: uh unfun podcast episode to do. I don't know, it's
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: fun and that it's super science. And there's a lot too.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that most people don't know,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna impart it to them in a approachable manner. Okay, Yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as like exciting as I thought. Afterward, I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: was kind of okay, well, you know what about poor
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Dave Rugs, who helped us out with this one. I
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: think Dave enjoys the stuff. Okay, I hope. So so
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: we're talking palm trees, Charles, and did you know this,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: let's start with this. There are more than twenty different
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: species of palm trees. Did you know that when you
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: were wandering around l A. No, I knew there were
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: quite a few, but I thought, you know, dozens. Okay,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: sit there, please continue to sit. Mhm. Did you know
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: that palm trees are in no way, shape or form? Actually,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I should take that back. They are not actually trees
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: as far as botanists are concerned. I definitely did not
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: know that. Very nice. And then lastly, Chuck, well, let's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: say it. Really, those are the two big crazy facts.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Palm trees are not trees. And that's a big one
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: because if you look at a palm tree, you say, no,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: it's a tree. It's got bark, it's very tall, has
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: leaves kind of branch out from it. It's a it's
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: a treat. Don't be ridiculous. And um, again to a botanist,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: it's not a tree. And we're going to get very
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: very detailed into why it's not actually a tree. Um.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: But it helps if you to to understand this, if
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: you just step back and look at a palm tree,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: even the tallest, biggest palm trees, those ones along Hollywood
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Boulevard in that Morrissey video. Um that those are giant
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: plants and those aren't trunks, those are stems. Yeah, that's
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that is pretty cool. And a botanist will sell you
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that a uh, someone else not as hung up on
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the botany might say, well, you know what, they function
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: as trees though, smarty, So take that fact and and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: stick it where the sun don't shine. And then that's
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: kind of the end of that conversation because they just
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: got hostile. Well no, somebody comes in and says, peas,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: peas children. Let's put it like this. Both palms are upright,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: tree form plants, and everyone says, thank you, Happy International
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Tolerance Day, everybody. That's right. But palms are closer categorically
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: speaking to grasses and grains like something like corn, than
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: it is that mighty oak. So again, it's just a tall,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: giant plant, not a tree, a plant, And in fact,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: giant is a really good way to put it, because
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of the growth patterns that um palms undertake
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: are are a form of gigantism. They're like plants on
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: steroids basically. So there you go. That's a good that's
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: some good groundwork for the whole thing. If you ask me,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I think so, Uh, maybe we could start at angiosperms. Uh,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: there are about three hundred thousand of those bad boys,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and these are flowering plants, and I think a lot
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of this stuff people. It may ring a bell to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: like high school biology, because when I was going through it,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, I learned about this
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: many many years ago. Uh, and it's all kind of
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: coming back to me. But um angie sperms of those
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: flowering plants that have the seeds in case in the fruit,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and it's the largest group in the plant kingdom. And
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: within that you've got monocots and die cots, and palms
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: are monocots. And that's important because I mean, you can't
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: talk about palm trees without talking about the specificity of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: like how they grow and how they how they operate. Yeah,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: because they're in in those details lies why they're not trees,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: why there's something else while they're basically gigantic plants. So
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: you said, palm trees are monocots. Die cots are what
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: we're used to when we look at a tree. Things
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: like elm trees, beach um, uh maple trees, all of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: those are die cots, right. Um. And when you're looking
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: at like a pine tree or an evergreen, usually that's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a gymnasperm that's like a completely different kind of uh
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: plant altogether. It doesn't have its um seeds and a fruit.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: It bears its seeds on like the outside of like
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a cone or something totally different thing. We don't need
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to talk about gymnasperms again. Instead, we're talking about monicots
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and dicotts, both angiosperms. Right. Uh. And if you've ever
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: planted a little die coot seedling, the first thing you're
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: gonna notice when it when it pops up out of
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the ground is you're gonna have to I think it's
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: called caddleadn. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, And you're gonna
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: see two of those, and it's very you know, that's
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: why it's called a die coot because there's two. A
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: monica like a palm, will only have one. Yeah, And
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: caddleadn is just the first leaves that come out of
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: a sprout. And so you've got two, and like you said,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: with the monicott, you've got one. That's a big difference.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: But that's surely not a big enough difference to be like, well,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: palm is not even close to a tree. It's something
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: totally different. You're right, Yeah, it goes on, I guess,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. The differences continue. It does.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: If you look at a dicott leave. If you take
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: like a a maple leaf or an oak tree leaf
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and you look at the back of it or at
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the front, but can really get a good look at
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the back or hold it up in the sun, you'll
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: see the little weblike pattern of veins coming off from
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: that central stem on a leaf. That's different on a
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: di coot, on a monocot, it does not do that.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: They they run parallel. Veins do from stiff from like
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: rear to tip. That's your vein right there, just a tip.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: There's also um. Die coots have something called a cambium layer.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And this is uh, this is really important to me.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: This is the big differentiator between palm tree and a
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: die coott tree like a maple tree. Right, This is
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the big difference is that palm trees don't make wood
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and die cott trees like a maple tree does. And
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: it does that because it has what's called secondary growth
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: where it has a bunch of cells xylem and flow
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: them cells which are vascular tissues, and they line up
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: in a circle and they form a ring in this
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: nice tight pattern and they grow outward and outward and outward.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: It every year, so that if you cut a tree
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: down and look at the stump that's left. You see rings,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and those rings are annual growth of spring would in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: autumn wood. But the upshot is is it's actually growing
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: would every year. As the tree grows outward, it gains girth,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and that is secondary growth. And the big distinction between
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: monocots and i coots is that monocots don't have secondary growth.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: They don't grow like that. They don't grow outward, they
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: grow upward. That's a huge distinction. Yeah, and this is
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: where you know it can get a little word parsi um.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Monocots generally do not have secondary growth. Palm trees do
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: have a kind of secondary growth, but it's not real
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: secondary growth. I think it's what's the what's the word
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: for it? Uh, anomalous secondary growth is that the one? Yeah,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: anomalous secondary growth. So, like every plan has primary growth.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: If you go and you shouldn't do this because it's
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: bad for the tree. But if you went and carved
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: your name into a mighty oak, that that's not gonna
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: grow up, that's not gonna be ten feet above your
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: head in thirty years because that tree is going outward.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: A palm tree like you said, it grows from the top.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: So when you see a palm, you're gonna generally see
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: those palm fronds sticking out of the top of it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And if you say, yeah, but there's some underneath it too,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: those are just fronts that haven't fallen off yet on
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the way up right exactly. So another way to put
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it is that palm trees grow up. They don't grow
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: out right, but they do have girth yea in some cases,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I know, girth just the tip growing would good lord,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: oh man, the ad sales people are blushing. Who saw
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: this coming? So, yeah, they do have girth, um, but
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: they have girth for a totally different reason. And and like, yeah,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: you can look at a palm tree and be like, yeah,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: it's a huge, it's thick, it's that's a trunk. But
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: some of them are really too. Yeah. I think the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: biggest one gets to like three feet in diameter. That's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a big old trunk. But the thing is, if you
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: cut a palm tree down and you look down inside
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of it, you're not gonna see neat pattern of tight
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: rings of those axylum and flow them cells. They do
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: have xylum and flow them cells because those are um
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: vascular cells. They carry water, minerals, sugars throughout the plant.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So all all plants and trees have xylum and flow
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: them cells. But in a in a a monocot, like
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a palm tree, they grow just kind of willy nilly,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and they grow upward. What gives the palm tree it's
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: girth is when those vascular cells themselves grow in size.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: So you've got more vascular cells growing up through the plant,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: through the stem of the plant, which you think is
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: a trunk. You have more of them, and then they
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: increase in size. That actually increases the girth of the stem.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: But the stem itself is not growing outward. It's not laying,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: it's not adding layers of growth outward because that would
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: be secondary growth, and and monocott ston't engage in secondary growth.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: That's right. And the other really cool thing about a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: palm is is and one of the things that uh
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: separates monocots from di coots is that monocots don't have
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: that central tap root. So if you, uh, if a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: storm came along and pulled up a palm tree, you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: would see where basically where the mom is about to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: call it a trunk. Uh, we'll probably call it a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: trunk here and there, but it is a stem where
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the stem meets the ground. If it's uprooted, you'll just
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: see just a spider web of smaller roots. It doesn't
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: have this big, one central tap root from which the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: other roots go. It comes straight from the base of
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that stem. That's right, And those are called um. I
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: think we'll get into a little bit later, but it's
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: called and votitious root growth, right, Yeah, which is not
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: super deep. I think the deepest you're gonna find is
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: maybe a few feet. Yeah, but they can really go out, yeah,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: like fifty feet out from from the trunk in either direction.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It's um. It's really something to see. But the problem
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: is that that also makes them often susceptible to being
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: blown over in hurricanes because they often grow along the coast. Yeah,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: and if you if it's a shallow grounded area, you
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: can a lot of times you can see a lot
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: of that root system sort of sitting level with the ground.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's neat in some kinds, I think, including um king palms,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: maybe royal palms that are nice. They look like big
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: fat cigars growing out of the bottom of the of
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the tree at the base. It's pretty cool looking. Take
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: a break. Oh man, you just you took the words
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: right out of my mouth. I think that's a good Uh,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: it's a good teaser for the first part. Yeah, I
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: say we take a break and let the ad sales
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: people do their thing. Are they going to read the ads?
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: We'll find out, Okay, okay, Chuck. So it turns out
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the ad salespeople did not read the ads, but they
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: did sell them and appreciate one for that. So, um
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: palms are actually super duper old. Some of the oldest
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: plant fossils we've turned up, and by we, I mean
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you and me specifically our palm um fraunds that are
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: upwards of seventy million years old um. But they think
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: that they're actually much older than that, because there's a
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: theory that palms are found all over the world because
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: they were growing on m Gondwana, which is part of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: a super continent after Pangia started to break up. Gondwana
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: was one of the big massive pieces of of um
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Earth that started to break up between hundred and eighty
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and a hundred forty five million years ago, and they
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: think the palms were like goodbye family, goodbye. As the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: as the land spread out informed the continence as we
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: know them today, and then started to do all sorts
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of weird stuff as they evolved in isolation from one another.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: That's right, uh, and weird stuff meaning there can be
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: tiny palms that are about you know, five to eight
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: inches tall. There is and I encourage people to safely
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: look up some of these because it is pretty amazing
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to see the variety. Like when you look up the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: wax palm. Uh, these are the ones I think generally
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: found in South America that are so tall and skinny.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, you think the one some of those in
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: l A are tall and skinny, nothing compared to these
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: wax palms where you look at them and they just
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: seem to sort of defy gravity, and you wonder, how
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: are they not just snapping in a half constantly with wind.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: It's uh um, anomalous secondary growth, that's the answer. But
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: those wax palms grow in the mountains in the andies.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So if you climbed up one of them, I think
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: they're up up to two feet tall, which is what
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: about seventy meters tall um, and you fell off the top,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: it get even worse because you'd also be falling off
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a mountain, so you don't want to climb a wax
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: palm unless you're just a dummy. That's right. Uh, those
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: stems that we talked about, the what most people might
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: call a trunk, Like we said earlier, they do very wildly.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Some of them are very small, just a few millimeters,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: and then those, you know, I have different kinds that
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: are my favorites. But one of my favorites of those
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: really big thick stemmed ones that are sort of load
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: to the ground, very big around and have a big
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: um just sort of almost like a fireworks display of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: blooms like a palmetto. Now not a palmetto palmettos. I
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: don't think you can really see the trunk very much,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: can you. I saw palmetto? I think yeah. I think
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: they get tall after a while, they stay short and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: then and then they achieve the correct girth and then
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: they grow longer. But I mean, there's twenty so I'm
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: sure there is a variety of something to suit your fancy,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, that's exactly right. And
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that one that grows only to be five inches tall
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and has a stemmed just a few millimeters thick, that
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: one's called dipsis minuda um and it's pretty cut. That
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: was not planned by the Really, Yeah, I don't buy that.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I swear I will, I will photo copy. I'll scan
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: this page and send it to you and you will
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: not see it on there. Well, that's because you mean
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: is standing with a big Q card in front of you, right,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: That's how I could get away with this, but you
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: figured me out. I can't. I think the one that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: we have in our backyard is um a windmill palm,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and we planted it when we first got to Atlanta.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Emily worked as a producer on a TV commercial and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: sometimes you might have noticed this a little bit with
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the TV show. Sometimes there's things that you get for
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a TV show or commercial or a movie that you
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: can't return or do anything with, and so at the
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: end of the job they'll be like, who wants this
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: whatever that we can't do anything with? And Emily said, oh,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: we would love that palm tree. Uh. And it was
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: kind of small, and we planted it here in Atlanta
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and it is really flourished. They are very easy to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: take care of. You don't really don't do anything and
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: they have managed to uh. And this is kind of
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: one of the points of how robust they can be
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: even though they generally grow in the tropical areas around
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the world. Uh, you know, this thing has had plenty
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: of snow on it and plenty of hard freezes in
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Atlanta over the years, and it's just as healthy as
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: can be. Yeah. Now, there's some palms that can thrive
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: in zone five B I saw, which is like South
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Nebraska and South Iowa. The needle palm does just fine there.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So Jersey short palms that said, yeah it has like, um,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: like bleached orange spikes rather than green fronds. That wasn't
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: written down either. I like that one. Um. But yeah,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it's just like plus species, they're gonna learn to adapt everywhere.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And they've been around for hundreds of millions of years,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: so they've actually gotten pretty good at doing things like
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: putting up with snow, which is surprising because again you
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: kind of associate the palms with like a tropical rainforest,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and for good reason, because they are found a lot
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: in tropical rainforests all throughout around you know, right above
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and below the equator around the world. Um. Apparently in
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the Amazon they make up six of all the trees
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that you'll find there, so they're pretty successful as far
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: as um as far as plants go, gigantic plants, that's right. Uh.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Should we talk a little bit about what what makes
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: up a palm tree? We've talked a little bit about it.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: You know, there are those roots that extend way way
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: out in a pretty shallow manner. Uh, there is that
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: elongated stem. And one thing you'll notice when you're looking
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: at a palm stem or if you want to go
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: up and hug one of those guys, is sometimes you
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: might get hurt. Uh. It is it doesn't have bark,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: it has the scars of of fronds it came before.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And depending on what kind of tree that is, it
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: could be it can be kind of smooth, but usually
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: they're kind of rough, and sometimes they're they're really rough
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and kind of uh pointing and spiky. Yeah, for sure, Um,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I think people kind of trim those kind back a
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: little bit. But um, I've all I was also reading
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: about over trimming them that you don't really want to. Um,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: you don't want to trim them too much, and you
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: definitely don't want to trim any kind of palm frond
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: that isn't totally brown and crusty, musty, because if it's
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: not even if it's yellow, that means that there's still
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a bunch of nutrient stores in there, just hanging out,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: and the palm is like, hey, you just used up.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: You just took a lot of my energy away. So um,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you want them typically either fall off naturally like they do,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: or wait until they're just so brown and desiccated that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that even you can tell this this palm front can
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: be taken off without hurting the tree. But um, it's
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: pretty obvious. It is pretty obvious. But I thought was
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: really interesting is is um the idea that that's that's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: not bark. Those are just like leaf remains, the remains
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of basically where the leaf hit the tree at one time.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And it looks if you if you look, Dave points
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: us out, and I never really put it into words before,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: but it's exactly true. It looks like the palm fronds
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: have been moving down the base of the tree, forming
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: this trunk all the way down, or forming the bark
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: all the way down. But really the stem has been
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: growing up and out of each leaf scar that's left
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: behind that forms what looks like the bark. So it's
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: almost like an optical illusion of palm tree. Yes, yeah,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I kind of get what he's saying there, Like, have
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you ever have you ever driven next to a car
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and the wheels are spinning so fast that they start
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: to look like they're they're spinning backwards much more slowly. Yeah,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's akin to that. Do you know what
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say? Is that thing where
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you where the car next to you you see out
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of your peripheral vision starts to move and you think
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: you're rolling forward and drink out a little bit and go,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: oh my god. Yeah, that's even better. I like that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: one even more. But it has nothing to do with
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: palm trees. No, it does, because they're all optical illusions. Okay, okay, um.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Should we talk a bit about Well, we talked about
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: how they grow. They grow from the top. When those
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: when those leaves pop out of the top, it's it's
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: called a spear and it pops out of what's called
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the apical meristem or the apical meristem, And that's the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: thing that's uh, you know, if a tree, if it
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: were a di coot, that's where the wood would be
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: growing from. But it's not. It depends so so they
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: both have apical maris stems from what I can tell,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: But the tree has a lateral maristem as well, and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that's where that girth around the sides grows to make
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it wider, the witty girth. But the thing another thing
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: that differentiates UM. Another thing that differentiates the palm tree
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: from a diet tree is that a die cout tree
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: has a bunch of different places where it has an
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: apical maris stem, and those we call branches the place
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: where branches grow off. So an apical meristem is wherever
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: primary growth, which is upright UM vertical growth of a
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: plant comes from, Like a maple tree has a bunch
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of them. Those are the branches and then eventually like
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: smaller branches and even into the leaves. That's all apical
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: meristem growth. A palm tree has one place aside from
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the roots, one place on the entire plant where it
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: is growing. Everything else is already grown gone left a
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: scar behind um them or it even looks like it's growing,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: but it's it's already grown, and it's just sitting there
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: photosynthesizing like a big old palm front. But right in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the middle of the top of the plant is the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: apical meristem, and that's where those new leaves shoot up from,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and that's where the xylem and flow divide and growth occurs.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And that's it. There's the one spot, and that's it
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: for the palm. Yeah. And if you if you have
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: a palm near you and it's low enough to see
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the top of it pretty well, you will see many
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: times among all those beautiful green fronds um sometimes like
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: big windmill fans, you'll see that little spiky thing sticking
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: kind of straight up, and that's called the spear, and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: it will unfold into the frond and it will it
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: will become a beautiful front. At one point it's almost
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: like ah, so it's almost like a caterpillar becoming a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: beautiful butterfly, except as a leaf. Except as a leaf.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen the palms that have you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: we we talked about the stem, how it's just sort
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of that rough scar all the way up. Sometimes you'll
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: see him that have a really smooth green part that
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: kind of looks like uh. And we'll get to coconuts
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: kind of looks like the very outside of a big coconut.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: That's called the crown shaft. The king palm is famous
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: for these, and that's that little smooth green section between
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: where the trunk is rough and where the leaves pop
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: out of the top right, and all those are are
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the like layered leaves folded around the top of the stem.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And as they as those leaves unfold and become fronds
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and hang out and photosynthesize, and then the energy stores
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: that they have is used up and they fall off.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Those kinds of palms, they fall off very cleanly, so
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: compared to other rougher um rougher exterior palms, like a
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: king palm is very smooth, even below the crown shaft
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: where it's kind of gray and layered in horizontal stripes.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: That's but those are still scars left from the leaves
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: that used to be attached there, that unfolded at the
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: crown shaft and grew and lived and died and then
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: fell off. There's so many weird sexual innuendos with palm trees.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I had no idea, no idea. It explains a lot
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: about how I felt about palm trees for a long time.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I had no idea. It probably doesn't hurt that we're
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: twelve years old, because there are plenty people out there, like,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: what have they been talking about? Yeah, that's true. Those
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: are eight years old. Uh. So let's talk about these
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: palm fronds or the palm leaves. Uh. There are a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: few different kind of shapes they can take. Uh, there's
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the feather like pinnate. Uh. If you see a coconut palm,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: this is what you're gonna see as a couple of
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: rows of those of those leafs kind of sprawling out
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: from that central rib down the middle. That rib is
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: called a ratcheus, and where it meets and this is
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of sort of you know, technical talk here,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: but the thick part where it actually meets the trunk,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that's called the petiole. Yeah, where the rat ratchetus meets
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the trunk, right, that's right. And then those leaves are
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: all individual. They're just connected. The only place where they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: join is that that rack is at the central rib um.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: But other than that, they're not connected, which makes them
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: different from a palmate um type of half. Those are good.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Those are those are really good. I think palmate might
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: be my favorite. Where they're there, they seemed disconnected, but
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: if you follow them back to their terminal point where
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: they connect to the branch. You'll see that they're all
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: connected at one central point and they're kind of fanned
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: out almost in a circle or semicircle, radiating away from
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: that one central point where they're all connected. Um, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: that's that central point is called the hastula. So that's palmate.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: That's another good one. And there's cost to palmate, right, Yeah,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the cost of poll made is a little bit of both.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: If you like a little pinnate, you like a little
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: palm mate, then you get your cost to palm mate.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: That is the fan shape as well, and it is
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: attached to a central rib called a costa, and that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it's extends from that pettiole into that leaf blade. Uh.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: You know when it's it's interesting when these things fall off,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: those those fan shaped ones and you gather them off
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: the ground, you really get a sense of their potential uses,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: which you know, we'll talk about that stuff a little
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: bit later, but like primitive uses as a fan or
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: as a broom or you know, they're all kinds of things. Things.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: When you have a big handful of those those dead
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: palm fronds, you can see even you know here in
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: modern times, like I could see how this could be useful. Yeah,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: just think about how much thought the writers of Gilligan's
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Island put into that. Yeah right, I can't watch that
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: show anymore. How about you. I haven't tried in a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: long time. Why why not? I think it's just rain
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: its course in my brain. It was great when I was,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you know, a younger person. Now I'm like, this is
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I can't watch this. Yeah. I had a recurring dream
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid. The first recurring dream I
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: remember had to do with Gilligan's Island. But it was scary,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: like the boat was washed ashore on the beach, and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I remember I was in the back kind of hiding,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: uh from somebody who was trying to get me or something.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But I had that dream over and over for a while.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: So wait a minute, somebody was trying to get you
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: while you were in the ship that was being shipwrecked. No,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it had already been shipwrecked, and it was just like,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: you know, a shipwrecked boat on shore that I was
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: hiding and like behind the back seat, did you ever
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: figure out who it was? No? You know, I don't
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: think I've ever had a recurring dream. All of my
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: dreams are all original material. Every time Huh, that's interesting.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I think so too. Did you have imaginary friends? No? No, no,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: they seem silly and superfluous to me. Someone just the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: only reason I've thought of that is because someone sent
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: that in as a as a request and saying that
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: imaginary friends is a sign of later successes in various
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: ways supposedly. Well, that explains a lot as well. But
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: look at you now. I don't know, but think about
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: how successful I could be if I had had imaginary friends.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I could be president of the world. My daughter has
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: what she calls ghost friends and always has and now
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: ghost parents, and we wonder sometimes if that is something
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: to do with being adopted, oh yeah, or if it's
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: just the regular imaginary friend thing with kids, or your
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: house is haunted and she can see things you can't,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: or that that's number three be pretty awesome. I mean
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: she's spelling it out for you. Chalk right there. All right?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Should we take another break? Sure? All right, we'll talk
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: about those uh not so beautiful palm flowers right after this.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: All right, If you've ever walked past the palm tree
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and you've seen a what looks like a blob of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: yellow or orange, orange is a big one. Yeah, I mean,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: what do they even look like? They look like just
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: a little tiny grape bunches, but but not really. They're
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: not very attractive to me, But I guess beauties in
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the eye the beholder. Those are palm, the flower of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the palm tree. So one thing I have to say, though, is,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck you you would probably have your eyes open if
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you spend a little time on Google images looking at
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: different palm inflorescences. Some of them are okay, yeah, there's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: some that are just straight up dazzling. I saw one
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that was like a nice pink and it looks like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: a really tight like you now, sometimes people have like
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: dreadlocks that are have been around so long they actually
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: merged into one big dread It looks like that, but
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: like a pinkish purple, yes, but a hot pinkish purple
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: version of that. It's very pretty. Um And again, there's
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: like twenty undred or more species of palm, so there's
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of different variety. But that said, I agree
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: with you, most of the palm inflorences inflorenceances I've ever seen,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: or not pretty at all. I think what my problem
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: is is I feel like it disturbs even the pretty
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: ones that it doesn't jibe with the rest of the look. Yeah,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: so it looks like like a really attractive person wearing
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: maybe a really nice hat, but that doesn't go with
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: the rest of the outfit. Okay, all right, I totally
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: get your meaning, and I think you nailed it. It
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: just doesn't seem to fit in. But you keep calling
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: them inflorescences instead of flowers. What do you mean by that? Well,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I mean inflorescence is just another name for a palm flower,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and palm is a It's an antio sperm, which is
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: by definition, a flowering plant. It just doesn't look like
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: what you and I would think of as flowers, but
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what it is. And with the palm, from
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: what I can tell, everything is a frond. It's some
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: sort some version of a frond, and the inflorescence is
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: no no exception. It's a specialized, weirdo version of the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: of the palm frond that grows out and depending on
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: the kind of palm, it's going to have either male flowers,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: female flowers, or it's going to have male and female
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: flowers in which cases off pollinating. And the upshide of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: all this is is when the female flowers get pollinated,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: they will produce fruit. And because we're talking abouferent species
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: of palms, you get a lot of different kinds of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: fruit that come along. Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting actually,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Like if you look at your standard coconut palm that
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: has both the male and female parts, so that makes
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: it monoecious. Uh, this is stuff that we learned in
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: high school biology. Again, I haven't seen that word in
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: so long, I know, I even was calling it monoecious
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: for a while. I was like, I, No, that's not right,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: that's what I was remember. No, it's monoecious and dioecious.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Those ohs are silent and dioecious. Palms only have male
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: flowers or female flowers. Uh. And like you said, depending
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: on the fruit. You know, if you're if you're a
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: coconut palm, uh, then you're gonna have both, but you
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: gotta fertilize that that female flower. If you're a date palm, uh,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: it's dioecious, so you can only harvest from the l tree.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: But you need to have both again to fertilize and
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: get that delicious bad date. But that is dates are
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: actually a fruit from palms from appropriately enough date palms.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I didn't either, and dates are
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: delicious in this um. Researching this made me want this.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: But I if I had to choose, I'm a fig
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: person for sure. Or figs from a palm? No, no,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: big tree. Yeah, but there's like, you know, dried fruit
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: dates and figs. They're so they're so you know, uh,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: they seem to go hand in hand. So I don't
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: think you have to choose, which is is just a
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: stupid thing to even bring up. I'm sorry I did well.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever had. In fact, I
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: can almost say certainly I've never had a fresh date,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: like right off of a tree. You mean, yeah, like that,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: you know, not dried and not like raisins or fig style,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: but like in the Raider's Lost Ark, the bad date.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Those are bad dates, bad dates. It's right that poor monkey,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was an evil monkey, but I think
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: he was trained to be evil. Oh you think with
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the Nazi salute? Yes, I don't think he was born
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: knowing how to do that. I think he was trained
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: to do that and it made him a bad, bad monkey.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: But I still don't think he deserved to be poisoned
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: by bad dates. You know that movie is uh has
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: been under fire in recent years because of the the
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: nature of India's relationship with Marilyn Marian and how old
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: she was. Oh yeah, and he's also like fairly rough
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: with her as well. Yeah, but there's this there's those
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: lines at the beginning where he talks about you know,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: you know what you were doing, you know, I was
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: a child or whatever. And I think for many years
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: everyone's just like, yeah, whatever, and then someone's like, wait
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: a minute, how much of a child was she? And
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I think people have tried to do the math over
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the years to work it out so with the time
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: period where it wasn't that bad. But I do know
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: that in discussion this something I talked on movie Crush
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit about. But Lucas and Spielberg, when they
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: were discussing it all at the beginning, one of them
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: was pushing at the time for him to make it
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: like creepy, Like no, man, let's make it really young
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: and make it really kind of a bad thing that
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: he did. Was that George Lucas doing that? I think
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: it might have been. I don't know. I should look
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: all the stuff up so I'm not you know, I'm glad.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Spielberg was like, yeah, yeah, great idea, A great idea.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: We'll definitely will workshop that later. Uh. Anyway, bad dates,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: bad dates, and um dates. By the way, Chuck, are droops,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: as are all palm fruits. Did you know that? I
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: didn't know that, but I did know that they were
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: similar to peaches and olives, and say, what peaches and cream? Yeah,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: peaches and cream. And in the way that they they
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: had that hard outer that kind of stony like covering
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: around the seed, right, but they're usually also covered with
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: some sort of flesh that we like to eat. Um,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: that's not always the case. So I think coconuts are
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the reverse of that. So like, if you're eating like
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a peach, the seed itself is that hard is inside
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the hard pit in the fruit. The coconut seed. No,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: a coconut is the opposite of that. It's got that hard,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: woody outer shell you can knock, knock, knock on, just
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: and have some fun with before you It's exactly right, Chuck,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: nice Um that you're m actually knows that's the endocarp
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the hardest part that you knock on the carpet. You're
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: talking about the hard green outer most layer. No, that
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: would be the exocarp. The endocarp is the hard brown,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: woody one that that you can knock on and then
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you can use as a bowling ball island exactly or
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: like a tiki cocktail cup all again on Killick's island. Um.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And uh, it's the stuff inside that that's the actual seed,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: and that's what we eat in the coconut, the the
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: endosperm and the liquid endosperm um, the stuff you eat
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: from a coconut, that's actually the seed that you're eating
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: where it's like a peach, you're eating the outside of
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the meat that's outside of the of the seed, right,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And that indo sperm is the the solid part is
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that flesh, that white, delicious nous coconut. And then the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: coconut water is the liquid into sperm. So if you
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: next time your friend is having a coconut water, to
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: sco up to them and say, entroy the liquid indo
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: sperm and they'll say, what are you talking about? You
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: can't say stuff like that. They'll do a spit take.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I hope not. Because that coconut water is delicious, it
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: is and expensive too. And if you're like, well, wait
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: a minute, I thought coconut water was coconut milk. You
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: are wrong, wrong, wrong. Coconut milk is taking coconut meat,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: grating it up into a paste and then adding water
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: to that. That that's coconut milk. That's delicious too, it is,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: it's super high. In fact, if they're really healthy fats, understand,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: that's a good fat and it um. I'm not a
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: big sort of Caribbean drink cocked guy. But oh you
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: don't like the tinky drinks. No, I'm not really into them,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: just a little too sweet. I mean maybe one of them,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: but uh, they're a little sweet for me. But that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: that coconut milk man with some with some rum is
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: a really nice combination. You know, people have been drinking
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: that for eons for good reason. They sure have. You
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: know what else they've been drinking even longer than that,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: chuck a little something called palm wine. Oh yeah, so
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that this existed, but it sounds awesome.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: But you're there are a lot of different kinds of
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: palm species that you can tap, including I think coca yeah,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: coconut palms and date palms and the Chilean wine palm,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: which they're like, well, yeah, of course, but you can
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: tap the sap of these things and what comes out
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: contacts the air and just a little bit amount of
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: like microbes in the air that come in contact with
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: the stuff immediately cause it to start to ferment, and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: within hours it has gone from palm sap to an
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: alcoholic beverage. And then hours after that, within about a
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: day or so of it being tapped, it turns into vinegar.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: So you have to drink this stuff which turns into
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: like a four percent alcoholic drink just by sitting out
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: in the air a few hours after it's tapped, within
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a day of tapping it, yeah, which is why it
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: is one of the oldest boozes because you could get
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: it quickly and pretty naturally, you didn't have to do
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: anything for And apparently they've caught monkeys actually drinking it too.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, like it. They I think they found
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: evidence that of humans drinking it as far back as
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: eighteen thousand years ago. It's a very long time um
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and that because they've caught um like primates other primates
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: drinking it's possible that it goes even further back in
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: our evolutionary history. Very interesting. I thought so too. There's
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: also palm oil, uh that is in food products, It's
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: in a lot of um skin products. It is uh
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: sort of an environmental disaster these days. There are plantations
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: in Indonesia Malaysia where basically you just clear cut forest
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: to plant more palms to get palm oil. And getting
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: um quote unquote sustainably sourced palm oil is difficult, too
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: impossible for your products. Uh. There are some people that
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: say there is no such thing and that if it's
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: something is labeled officially sustainable, They're like, well, no, just
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: go back fifteen or twenty years and there was once
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: natural forest growth there too. So it's kind of a
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: meaningless title when just a handful of years have to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: go by before you say, oh no, no, no, this
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: this palm field was here already. Like from what I understand,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: this is just not the case. Yeah. That was one
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: of those things where I looked into I was like,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: oh good, another reason to to um be pessimistic and
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: loose hope. There's the akai those little kai berries. I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: didn't know they came from palms? Is it a kaya
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: tho asi? I've always said a kai, but it's probably
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: a sid never said it out loud. So there it's
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: like supposed to be a super food rich in antioxidants,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and I was like, that rings a bell. We did
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: an episode in anti oxidants, did we did? We surmise
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: that it's BS And I went back and I read
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: a transcript of it and um, it may bee So
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: take that however you like. But it definitely does have
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: all sorts of antioxidants, including antho cyanins, because that's where
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it has its purple color from the s E does Okay,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: is it really a sai? I feel foolish as I've
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: never heard it said. Well, now you have from your
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: good pal Josh. I don't think I've ever said it
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: out loud until now in front of millions of you.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Are right, So it's no biggie. You've got the hearts
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: of palm, of course, that you'll find usually in a
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: can on a shelf in your grocery store. Is that's
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the apical Maris stem chuck. That is it's just about
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to say that, and it is right there at the core.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: You get them in Hawaii and Costa Rica or places
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: in South America, and you chopped that thing down and
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: it's got that little, that little tender core. And the
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: reason it's usually in a canus because it's doesn't last
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: very long. Yes, uh so it's pickled typically, right yeah? Um?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: What about battle nuts? Did you know about those before?
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Because I had heard of them, but I had no
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: idea what the video was. I knew. I knew about
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: them because I know that chewing them, which is popular
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: in certain Asian countries, is can be really bad for you.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: It can make your teeth like red and black and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: give you cancer. But it's a stimulant, right, Yeah, it
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: gives you a pretty good butt, so it all works
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: out in the end, does it really? Something like of
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: the people in the world chew battle nuts and that
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: makes it the fourth most used um psychoactive um material
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I guess or substance after um nicotine, caffeine, alcohol and
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: then battle nuts. What about rich hand If you've ever
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: been to peer one import since sat in a in
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: a wicker one? Are those things called the big bowl?
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Oh papasan chick papasan that is made from palm ritan, uh,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: from Ritan palms, and it's very hardy. And you know
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: how I mentioned that those fronds are very useful, Like
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: this is the stuff over the years that they use
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: faun fronds for for rooftops and ratan to make really
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: strong furniture, very useful. Yeah, I had no idea, but
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: ratan has really wicked mean barbs and thorns sticking off
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: of it because it uses it to climb up other trees.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Um and the stem is really pliable. It's not you know, upright,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: but it grows vertically, but it's like a vine. And
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: apparently the stem can get up to like five feet long.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of it's a lot of pure one wicker,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of wicker. What was the name of that chair?
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the chair that they would sit in
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: for prom pictures in the seventies, the eyes a case
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: like Moses, Yes, yeah, exactly. I don't know. There's a throne,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: sort of throne. That's exactly right. That's a chair too.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: So I guess we should finish up with a couple
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: of little fun facts. One of them. Dave included a
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: few of these. The double coconut palm has uh. I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's the largest seed. Is it the
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: largest one in the world? Yes? Okay, A mature coconut
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: from that double coconut palm can weigh about ninety pounds
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and the seed inside is about fifty five. And Dave said, uh,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: something about the way they look I can't remember exactly
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: how he put it, suggestive, suggestive. And I looked it
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: up and it looks like a butt. Oh, that's not
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: what it suggested to me. I thought it looked like
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: a butt in an an anus. Did you think it
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: looks like female parts? No, just but just come around
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: to the other side of a dude. You thought it
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: looked like a scrotal sack. Yes, yeah, well put I
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: thought it looked like a button, a butt hole. No,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: it looked like I mean, I could see how you
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: would think that, But it looked like a scrotal sac
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: to me. I thought that was the avocado. That's that's what. Yeah,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: for sure, avocado has got it going on too. I've
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: got one more fact? What else? What else do you have? Nothing?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I want to hear your last fact? Well, I think
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: it'd be kind of fun to just talk about what
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: happened in Florida with all those palms. Oh yeah, I'd
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: love to do that. This is a good one. This
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the reason Florida has so many palms is because of
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: a shipwreck in January of eight seventy eight, the Spanish
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: brigantine that the Providencia crash landed with a bunch of
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: coconuts on board. Yeah, coconuts and a bunch of other stuff.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: But there were like twenty thousand coconuts, and a guy
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: named William lane Heart who was one of the early
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: pioneers along this this um like um settlers of European descent,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: i should say, along this stretch of Florida Beach where
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: this this shipwreck happened. I bought the whole um shipwreck
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and all of its cargo for like twenty dollars and
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: proceeded to try to sell the coconuts for what was it,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: like two cents each or a half of two and
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: a half cents, and he sold about a thousand but
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: still it's like a couple of hundred bucks. He like,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, ten times over. And then he said,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I think I'm just gonna plant the rest of these
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I think it would be easier than trying to drum
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: up a market for these things. And that's it. That's
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: where palm beaches now. Yeah, the all of the coconut
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: um palms that you see, they are not native. They
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: are descended from that original shipwreck cargo of coconuts. Very
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: very cool. It is very cool indeed. And also check
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: they mentioned Henry Flaggler in there is Founding Palm Beach
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: and West Palm Beach and he if college that's right,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and Flagler County. He was like an old Ford executive
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: who made his money, uh well from working at Ford
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: early on and then started like a railroad and then
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: started like founded Palm Beach and was just fabulously wealthy.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: But um, you know, I know we've talked about going
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to Providence, Rhode Island and touring some of those old
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Gilded Age mansions. He has one in Palm Beach. So
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: if you ever make your way down to Palm Beach,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: go see the Flaggler House Museum. It's one of the
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: most amazing houses you will ever walk in in your
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: entire life. It's astounding. I will check that out. My
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: uh best friend from high school uh rad the uh
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: map drawer of the cartographer. Yeah, he went to Flagler.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: So I went to and this was in St. Augustine though,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: but um, I went to Flagler. A couple of times
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: in St. Augustine is a lovely town. We'll just make
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: your your way a little further south a couple of
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: hours down to Palm Beach and check out Flaglers. I'll
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: do it. Okay. Uh, Well, since Chuck said I'll do it,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: that means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mayo.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Josh and the Simpsons. I'm sure
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: you saw this. I figured we could just answer this
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: on the air because I think I know the answer
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: is worried about this, Hey guys, that we were going
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to read it. Okay, hey, guys, just listen to the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: hot Dog episode. I was a little surprised at Josh
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: let the whole episode go by without citing Homer's famous
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: line about hot dogs from the episode where he tries
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to get into the grease business. Then I realized this
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: is a phenomenon I've noticed several times. Like Josh, I'm
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: a Simpson super fan, so I feel like I have
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: to take issue with everyone who has written in to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: say you missed this quote or citation. On the contrary,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: what's happening, I think is Josh's biting his tongue and
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: letting I would guess one to three opportunities passed by
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: for episode because he doesn't want to be known primarily
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: is that Simpson's dork and avoid owing royalties to Matt graining. Josh,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: please validate my hunch that is from g. You're not
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: holding your tongue, are you. Occasionally I do, actually, very
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: very rarely. I think g is giving me way too
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: much credit. And at the risk of of sounding like
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: a fraudulent Simpsons fan, there are a ton of references
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: that people right in and be like, you walked right
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: past this one, and I'll be like, I don't remember
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: that one at all, or I totally forgot about it.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. But every once in a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: while I will hold it back because you just have
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: to keep the proportion of Simpson's fandom like at a
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: at a certain threshold. Other than that stuff you should
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: know is like, it's stuff you should know. The Simpsons
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: fans were more well rounded than that. So yes, every
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: once in a while, I do, not three times an episode. No,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. That's a that's over crediting me
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: for sure. Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Gene. If you want
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: to be like G and ask a question or see
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: if your hunch is confirmed. Send it to us via
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. M H.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
• 52:05
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• 52:08
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• 52:11
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