This spring, I started an occasional series of posts on the palms of Palm Beach County. Probably the most complete post was the one about our state “tree,” the Sabal Palmetto (Cabbage Palm). But, as any writer knows, the more you strive for comprehensiveness, the more you realize you are doomed to failure. Case in point: the palms are blooming right now, and I didn’t include any pictures at all of the blooms in that post! Here are a couple that I took today, while on my lunch break (I’m working from a home office again, so I’m able to [...]
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Just before my recent trip to India I went on a morning walk with the lad and ran across a couple of interesting palm trees that I hadn’t seen before. What interested me about them was their intriguingly shaped hastula: Although I’ve only been looking at this structure for about a month, I’ve been surprised by the variety of shapes it assumes; this is the most nearly circular I’ve found yet. I have no idea what species of palm this is, but since it’s not far from my house, I’ll have plenty of time to puzzle it out with the references later. [...] I’ve lived in Palm Beach County, Florida, for almost ten years now. But I don’t really know very much about palm trees. I mean, I can tell a sabal palmetto from a saw palmetto, and a royal palm from a Christmas palm, but that’s really about the limit of my knowledge. So I’ve decided to start a project of random photo safaris to take pictures of palm trees. The project may teach me something about photography, and it’s sure to improve my knowledge of palm trees! For this inaugural post, though, rather than use all new photos, I’m going to have [...] Today’s word is a botanical term, hastula, which I assume originates from the Latin hasta, spear. I can only assume it because I don’t know it for a fact. None of my desk references, not Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, not the “unabridged” American Heritage 4th edition, not even the venerable Oxford English Dictionary admit the term into the language. Even the online OED gives me this sad result: No results, alas, even in OED So, what to do now? Well, go back to the book in which the hard word arose. In this case, it’s Wunderlin and Hansen’s Guide to the Vascular Plants of [...] |
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