In the Philippines, the coconut tree is called the "tree of life."
The warm temperatures of Florida make it an ideal location to plant or find palm trees. The trees grow in subtropical and tropical climates. Ideal locations possess climates with rare occurrences of below-freezing temperatures, like southern Florida. High humidity and frequent rain also meet the needs of palm trees. Many species of palm trees flourish in the hot Florida sun.
Species
With over 2,500 of species of palms in the world, palm trees dot the humid landscape of Florida. The bamboo palm tree, a nonnative palm species able to grow on the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, reaches a mature height between four and 12 feet, displaying spiral, pinnate compound leaves, white flowers, and a round, half-inch black fruit. The Mexican fan palm grows over 60 feet, often reaching 100 feet, with fan shape leaves growing 360 degrees around the top of the tree. It produces small, seasonal, white flowers and tiny one-third inch black, oval fruit. Other species of palm trees growing in Florida include the Alexander palm, areca palm, Bismarck palm, bottle palm, California fan palm, Canary Island palm, carpentaria palm, Chinese fan palm, date palm, fishtail palm, foxtail palm, kentia palm, lady palm, majesty palm, mangrove palm, Mediterranean palm, paurotis palm, pindo palm, queen palm and royal palm.
Palm Trees vs. Cycads
Palm trees possess distinctive fern-like compound leaves. The compound leaves come in two styles--the palmate, which looks like a fan, and the pinnate, which forms a feather shape. The leaves usually stretch two to four feet in length and reside high in the tree. The cycad, a close relative of the palm tree, resembles a palm. Often, people mistake the short multi-trunked tree as a palm tree. Cycads originated over 250 million years ago. The compound leaves often cause the confusion as well as the cycads thriving in the same climate as most tropical-loving palm trees. Cycads, an increasingly popular landscaping plant in tropical and subtropical America, reproduces via pine cone shaped seed dispersal units attached to the center of the tree, surrounded by pinnate compound leaves.
Reproduction
Palm trees in Florida typically fertilize seeds by wind or insects. Each tree produces both male and female flowers, though not necessarily in the same season. The white flowers blossom first. The date palm creates a notorious cloud of pollen particles during the fertilization period. The flowers disappear and the fruit take its place. The fruit ripens and drops, where hungry wildlife, water and sometimes wind take the fruit away from the parent tree. The fruit may be eaten by wildlife too. Germination follows.
Fruit
Typically, the palm tree produces a drupe type of fruit, wherein a fleshy outer later protects a hard seed not unlike a peach. Even though scientists and biologists debate on the actual type of coconut tree fruit, Palomar College states in "Identification of Fruit Types" that "the coconut is considered a dry drupe with a green, waterproof outer layer (exocarp), a thick, buoyant, fibrous husk (mesocarp) and a hard, woody, inner layer (endocarp) surrounding the large seed." Other palm trees usually produce small, round, black drupe, although some species produce a berry-like fruit. Florida palm trees with edible berries include the Guadalupe palm, jelly palm tree, and date palm.
Diseases
Palm trees in Florida may catch numerous pests or disease. One of the recent imports to Florida is the Texas Phoenix palm decline. Caused by unidentified bacterium, the disease systematically kills the palm tree. It spreads by insects such as planthoppers. The most susceptible trees include the Canary Island date palm, edible date palm, wild date palm and cabbage palm. A fungus, the Ganoderma zonatum rots about four feet of a palm tree's trunk in a disease call Ganoderma butt rot. Infected trees display wilted, brown leaves and a white protrusion near the base called a conk.
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