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Bizarre Self-Destructing Palm Tree Found
Smivs writes "A giant self-destructing palm tree has been discovered in Madagascar. The palm is 20m (60ft) high with leaves 5m (16ft) long, the tallest tree of its type in the country, but for most of its life — around 100 years — it appears fairly unremarkable apart from its size. However, when it flowers, it puts so much energy into an impressive flower-spike, that it eventually collapses and dies.
Dr John Dransfield, who announced the tree in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, is baffled as to how it came to be in the country.
It bears a resemblance to a species of palm found in regions of Asia; 6,000km away. It is thought that the palm has gone through a remarkable evolution since Madagascar split with India some 80m years ago."
The best people in history have thrown all of their energy into their work, and produced works of genius.
Then they die, because they had nothing left.
Of course, middle management and morons live on. This is why humanity is doomed.
Given that in most areas I can see individual cars on the ground, I'm not too impressed...
if it is a coconut palm, it was probably carried there two african swallows and a piece of string.
Bizarre Self-Destructing Palm Tree Found
Ah...the new Britney Spears model.
Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out.
This isn't the first germinate-then-die species.
It may, however, be among the largest and the first to use gravity to kill itself.
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The tree lives 100 years and then gives a last hurrah with a magnificant burst of flowers and dies. Not a bad way to go at all, eh?
I have some theories:
Dies once it has produced it's fruit. Possibly to allow it's seedlings some light. Also, more fruit means more likelihood of a successful bunch of seedlings.
How did it get to Madagascar? Well, it's flowers produce lots of nectar but not sure if the fruit itself is edible - probably the Polynesians carried it with them. After all, they are the ones who first colonized Madagascar not the Africans.
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"is baffled as to how the it came to be in the country"
Looks like they left out fsck in the middle.No wonder this is a Slashdot story pick. People around here are very familiar with palms and reproductive spikes.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
but if the palm tree is not too evolutionarily distinct, the palm may have been brought there by humans more recently from indonesia, not survived for 40M years in isolation
and i say this because madagascar was populated by modern humans from indonesia first, and africans second
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar#Pre-history
linguistically and culturally, madagascar is closer to indonesia than it is to mainland africa, which is rather bizarre when you look at a map
indonesians could have bought the palm fruit with them, and the palm might still be found in indonesia, or went extinct there
it's a plausible alternative theory to the 40M years in isolation hypothesis
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It's more bizarre than they think. It's really just an annual plant, with its year based on Uranus.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Does the tree flower after a hundred years and expend so much energy that it kills itself? Or does the tree put on an impressive flowering process because after a hundred years it's dying and needs to spread some seeds before it's too late?
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Salmon also die in the process of spawning themselves. They basically use up every ounce of fat and energy while swimming upstream to spawning waters and producing eggs. But I've never heard of anybody referring to this process as "self destruction."
there is a variant of the giant palm that propagates from lightening strikes. A bolt hits the tree, explodes its seed pods and sends them all over the place.
"This palm tree will self-destruct..." =)
I think Google Maps/Google Earth don't have the most detailed satellite information for most of Madagascar. So the level of detail at which it's surprising to be able to see this tree could perhaps be one zoom level out from the level at which it's unsurprising to be able to see cars.
Reminds me of an Agave plant we had out behind our house.
For my entire childhood it was just this big spiky Aloe like bush behind the house. About 5 feet tall. Then one time when I was in my late 20's it grew this absolutely gigantic spike about the height of a telephone pole, flowered, and then produced hundreds of little budding plantlets that fell off and took root. The original plant then promptly died.
As a sincere C++ programmer, I always provide a clean destructor for all my trees. AVL, binary, oct/quad, nnary... I have written it so many times. And they cleanly self destruct when they go out of scope.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
20m = 60f
5m = 16f
Obviously meters shrink, or feet grow, the more you have of them.
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With fronds like that, who needs enemies?