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