(artwork by Sören Meding on artstation.com)
Ocean Pirates
Thursday, June 12, 2025
All hands abandon ship !
(artwork by Sören Meding on artstation.com)
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Pindo palm
The South American Jelly Palm, also known as the Pindo Palm, is one of the most cold hardy feather palms and has a long history of scientific reclassification. It is commonly mislabeled as its less cold hardy cousin, Butia capitata. Jelly palms can grow in temperate and subtropical climates up to 20 feet in height with a trunk typically up to 2 feet in diameter. The tree grows quickly once established, pushing 6 or more fronds per year even in cooler climates.
This palm produces a fruit typically yellow-orange in color, which is said to taste like a mix of apricot, pineapple, and vanilla. The fruit is commonly consumed fresh, used to make jelly, or fermented for making wine.
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Striking in its look, the Pindo's feather-leaf, silver-colored fronds (some call it more of a turquoise) produce an exceptional contrast to a typical lawn's color.
These are some of the hardiest palms in South Florida, doing fine in cooler temperatures, blazing sunlight, salty air and dry conditions.
An indigenous plant in some cases called "Jelly Palm," the Pindo Palm generates edible berries that can be made into jelly with a sweet banana/pineapple flavor. The fruits are around 1 inch in size with a seed in the middle. However, just one tree is self-fertile and will produce large bunches of dates every season.
The style of this palm is distinct yet functional. It is often used for smaller lawns, found in moderate coastline homes, an antique Florida bungalow, or dressing up the backyard of a ranch-style residence. Pindo Palms look great in large forest estates, horse ranches or waterside houses as an intense spot in the landscape.
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Chilean Wine Palm - Jubaea chilensis
The majestic and stately Chilean Wine Palm is truly extraordinary. It is the largest palm in the Western Hemisphere. Until recently, its massive trunk had earned it the title of the largest palm in the entire world – until the larger African Fan Palm (Borassus aethiopum) was discovered. Nonetheless, it is awe inspiring to see any palm of this size.
Seeds of Chilean Wine Palm were brought to California in the mid-1800s. Young specimens were available for purchase at Ralph Kinton Steven’s nursery here in Santa Barbara, from 1882 until his death in 1896. The remaining 37 acres of that nursery are now the grounds of Ganna Walska Lotusland, where many fine specimens of his enormous palms still stand.
Amazingly, Chilean Wine Palm is so cold-hardy that it grows as far north as England, Ireland, and Victoria, British Columbia. More importantly, it grows exceedingly well in our Mediterranean climate, which is very similar to its native habitat in Chile.
Chilean Wine Palm has a straight single trunk that grows slowly to over 80 feet tall. This great trunk height is interesting, since it can take several decades before a trunk even begins to develop on young palms.
At maturity, the trunk is widest at the base, three- to five-feet (or more!) in diameter. After attaining some 30- to 40-feet in height, the trunk gradually narrows to half of that width. This narrowing results in a fully grown palm having the appearance of an elongated wine bottle – and makes identification easy. In addition to its tremendous size and odd shape, the elephant-gray trunk is further distinguished by its smooth texture, which is only marred by faint horizontal scars where shed fronds had previously been attached. It is astoundingly hard – as if made from gray concrete.
The trunk is topped with a large dense crown, consisting of 40 to 50 arching pinnate (feather-like) fronds (six- to twelve-feet long), which stand on a petiole (stem) (1½- to 3-feet long) that bears stiff hairs but no spines. Each frond has many leaflets (to two-feet long, one-inch wide).
As with most palms, on seedlings the juvenile fronds are simple (unsegmented) for several years. Once the seedling stage has passed, on young trees the fronds are straight, rigid, and often stand quite upright. As the tree matures, pinnate fronds emerge glaucus (bluish green) or in various shades of gray-green, depending on genetic variability. The fronds are “self-cleaning” as they will drop when dead, without need of pruning.
Chilean Wine Palm is monoecious, meaning each tree produces both male and female flowers. From April to June, the small (1/2-inch diameter) flowers bloom – maroon in color with a yellow-white center. Large (two- to three-feet long) clusters of flowers emerge from between fronds. The flower clusters are usually very difficult to see from the ground, because they are almost entirely shielded from view by a persistent woody bract (envelope-like sheath) until the fruit is fully formed. However, fallen flowers, like dainty snowflakes, often cover the ground at the base of the trunk.
After pollination, female flowers produce clusters of globose fruit (1½-inch long) covered by an orange-yellow fibrous skin. In late summer to early fall, the fruits ripen and then drop to the ground. Under the fruit skin, there is a round (one-inch diameter) brown nut, which looks like a miniature coconut. When cracked open, the nut reveals a white meat that has the look, texture, and taste of true coconut. In Chile, the nut is called “coquito nut”.
As can be inferred from its name, the Chilean Wine Palm is native to Chile, and is endemic to that country’s central Coastal Range. This palm once covered vast areas in this area, before its numbers were decimated by loggers who harvested it for its trunk sap. As its name also suggests, the trunk sap was fermented to produce “palm wine.” It can also be boiled down to make a sweet syrup called “palm honey” for consuming and cooking.
Unfortunately, the palm wine making process required that each magnificent palm be killed – cut down and drained of its “life blood” – simply to collect up to 100 gallons of its trunk sap.
Fortunately, with protections currently in place in Chile, this logging practice is now legally restricted. Almost all Chilean Wine Palm populations in Chile are presently confined to designated preserves. While there are an estimated 100,000 palms in these preserves, Chilean Wine Palm is still listed as endangered by some conservation organizations. Its preservation is aided by the fact that is being planted – and enjoyed only for its beauty – in many other parts of the world that have suitable climates – like ours.
Chilean Wine Palm is also known by several other common names: “Chile Cocopalm,” “Syrup Palm,” “Honey Palm,” “Coquito Palm,” and “Palma Chilena.” Its botanical name is Jubaea chilensis. It is the only species in its genus. The genus name, Jubaea, is derived from the name of Juba (85 B.C. to 46 B.C), who was the king of Numidia (present day Algeria) before the Roman invasion. The specific epithet, chilensis, means that it is native to Chile.
This remarkable palm is both cold-hardy (able to tolerate temperature, for brief periods, down to five degrees F.) and drought-tolerant. However, it seems to grow best in a Mediterranean climate, because it does not like excessive heat, humidity, or moisture. It will not survive either salt spray or salty soil, so it is best to keep it away from beach areas. It can live in clay soils – but prefers a well-drained sandy loam. When a palm is young, overhead watering is discouraged, because it may result in “bud rot” – the infestation of the apical meristem (the growing point of new fronds) by a plant pathogen (Phytophthora palmivora) – that will end in the death of a young palm.
Propagation with fresh seeds is easy – but requires considerable patience, since it can take one to two years for them to germinate! Growth is painfully slow at the earlier stages – but it accelerates once seedlings are planted out in an area with favorable growing conditions. It should be planted in full sun for best appearance. Occasional ground watering during the dry season and an annual application of slow-release fertilizer can also speed growth.
While Chilean Wine Palm is not a palm for small gardens or spaces, it does make an impressive addition to a suitable park or larger property. It can be planted as a single handsome specimen – or planted in a row or a grouping for great dramatic effect.
https://sbbeautiful.org/chilean-wine-palm-jubaea-chilensis-september-2023/
Sunday, April 27, 2025
New Research Rewrites the Demise of Easter Island
(smithsonianmag.com Feb. 11, 2020)
The story of Easter Island—home to the famous moai monoliths—is a tragic one. But depending on the individual you ask, the harbingers of its early demise aren’t always the same.
In one version, the island—a remote outpost thousands of miles off the western coast of South America—was settled in the 13th century by a small group of Polynesians. Over time, the migrants papered the landscape, once rich with trees and rolling hills, with crop fields and monoliths. The transformation eroded the nutrient-rich soil, catapulting the island onto a path of destruction. As the trees dwindled, so did the people who had felled them: By the time Dutch explorers arrived on Easter Island in 1722, this early society had long since collapsed.
But in recent years, evidence has mounted for an alternative narrative—one that paints the inhabitants of the island they called Rapa Nui not as exploiters of ecosystems, but as sustainable farmers who were still thriving when Europeans first made contact. In this account, other factors conspired to end a pivotal era on Easter Island.
The latest research to support this idea, published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science, comes from an analysis of the island’s ahu—the platforms supporting the moai, which honor the Rapa Nui’s ancestors. Using a combination of radiocarbon dating and statistical modeling, a team of researchers has now found that the spectacular statues’ construction continued well past 1722, post-dating the supposed decline of the people behind the moai.
“Monument-building and investment were still important parts of [these people’s] lives when [the European] visitors arrived,” says study author Robert J. DiNapoli, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon, in a statement. https://news.arizona.edu/news/researchers-revise-timing-easter-islands-societal-collapse
Data amassed from 11 Easter Island sites shows that the Rapa Nui people began assembling the moai sometime between the early 14th and mid-15th centuries, continuing construction until at least 1750, reports Sarah Cascone for artnet News. These numbers fall in line with historical documents from the Dutch and Spanish, who recorded observations of rituals featuring the monuments through the latter part of the 18th century. The only true ceiling for the moai’s demise is the year 1774, when British explorer James Cook arrived to find the statues in apparent ruins. And despite previous accounts, researchers have failed to find evidence pointing to any substantial population decline prior to the 18th century, writes Catrine Jarman for the Conversation.
While the Europeans’ stays “were short and their descriptions brief and limited,” their writings “provide useful information to help us think about the timing of building,” says DiNapoli in the statement.
The revised timeline of the monoliths also speaks to their builders’ resilience. As foreign forces came and went from the island, they brought death, disease, destruction and slavery within its borders, explains study author Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University, in the statement.
Eventually, however, a still-mysterious combination of factors shrank the population, and by 1877, just over 100 people remained on Easter Island, according to the Conversation. (The Rapa Nui, who are still around today, eventually recovered.)
The trees, too, suffered, though not entirely at human hands: The Polynesian rat, an accidental stowaway that arrived with the Rapa Nui and began to gnaw their way through palm nuts and saplings, was likely partly to blame, reported Whitney Dangerfield for Smithsonian magazine in 2007.
But Lipo points out the many ways in which the Rapa Nui have persevered in modern times.
“The degree to which their cultural heritage was passed on—and is still present today through language, arts and cultural practices—is quite notable and impressive,” he says in the statement.
This “overlooked” narrative, Lipo adds, is one that “deserves recognition.”
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Rapa Nui
Not sure if this photo is real or computer generated, it is so hard to tell these days.
Makes me want to go to Easter Island though. I've wanted to go there for years but whenever I get serious about it I usually talk myself out of it. I'm so fascinated by the island that if it didn't live up to my high expectations I would get depressed and dejected since it is such a journey and process to get there.
I would probably ask myself over and over, "What didn't you just go to Hawaii?".