Stuff You Should Know - Palm Trees: Technically, Giant Plants

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Palm trees. You see them all over the world and for good reason. There are more than 2,500 varieties. Learn all about these giant plants today.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. It's your old pals, Josh and Chuck, and you will have the chance to see us live in person for the first time in two years, Friday, January 21st in San Francisco, right, Chuck? That's right. We're returning to the stage at Sketch Fest. We're very excited about it. We

can't wait to see everyone. It is a Vax-only show. Bring your Vax card. It is a mask-only show. Bring that mask. Can't wait to see a third of your faces. That's right. You can get tickets at sfsketchfest.com. And again, Friday, January 21st, 7.30 p.m., Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, California. We will see you there. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck, Chuck, Chuckaluck Bryant. This is going to be a good one. I can tell by your nickname, Chuck, and this is stuff you should know, the podcast. The Palmcast. Oh, nice. Was that off the cuff, or do you have it written on your nose? It was off the cuff. Wow. That's probably about as funny as this one's going to get.

There's not a lot of room for jokes in here, but, but, Chuck, this is the topic that I didn't know I wanted to know more about. Oh, really? I had no idea. When you threw out palm trees, palms, I genuinely was puzzled. I'm like, I have to know what triggered that, because that's not something that you're walking around. I live around palm trees all the time. They're all over the place, and I've never stopped and been like, we should do an episode on palm trees. So what caused that? I thought I told you no. No. So, and this is very true, is I went to Los Angeles to go to a sales dinner, as you know. Right. And they were bringing a bunch of new sales people on board at iHeart, and they had a dinner because they had not met in person, and they said,

hey, let's get Chuck out here, because we know Josh didn't want to go. Somebody said, what about Josh? I was like, no, no, just, just Chuck, believe me. No, I think they just didn't bother because you would have been like, are you serious? Just to come say hi and stuff. And we were, you know, sales people were picking my brain and being inquisitive and saying, how do you get your topics? How do you get your topics? And I literally, I said, you know, you just look at the world around you and they come to you. And I looked outside in Santa Monica, and I said, like palm trees, that could be an episode. And they said, make it an episode. That is a great ad sales impression, by the way. No, none of them talk like that. In fact,

it's quite opposite. The ad sales people are very smooth. Oh, I'm guessing so. Yeah. I mean, they sell ads for Pete's sake. Yeah. So they just said, wow, really? And I said, yeah. And in fact, I will do it and I will dedicate this episode to ad sales. That's awesome. This is the episode everybody wants to hear the episode on palm trees dedicated to ad sales. That's right. Well, no, they do a great job and they keep the show nice and free for everybody. Oh, that's right, man. That is right. So hats off to the ad sales people. This one's for you guys. But that is how it came about. It's just a sort of an example of you just sort of look around sometimes. And I lived in L.A. for quite a few years, as you know, and I loved palm trees. I have a palm tree in my backyard. And

I was like, wait a minute. There's a lot of different kinds. And I wish I knew more about them. And now I have a very unfun podcast episode to do. I don't know. It's fun in that it's super sciency and there's a lot to it. There's a lot of stuff that most people don't know. And we're going to impart it to them in a approachable manner. Okay. Yeah. It wasn't as exciting as I thought afterward. I was kind of like, oh, okay. Well, you know, what about poor Dave Roos who helped us out with this one? I think Dave enjoys this stuff. Okay. I hope so. So we're talking palm trees, Charles. And did you know this? Let's start with this. There are more than 2,500 different species of palm trees. Did you know that when you were wandering around L.A.? No. I knew there were

quite a few, but I thought, you know, dozens. Okay. Sit there. Please continue to sit. Did you know that palm trees are in no way, shape or form? Actually, I should take that back. They are not actually trees as far as botanists are concerned. I definitely did not know that. Very nice. And then lastly, Chuck. Well, that's it really. Those are the two big crazy facts. Palm trees are not trees and that's a big one because if you look at a palm tree, you say, no, it's a tree. It's got bark. It's very tall. It has leaves that kind of branch out from it. It's a tree. Don't be ridiculous. And again, to a botanist, it's not a tree. And we're going to get very, very detailed into why it's not actually a tree.

But it helps if you, to understand this, if you just step back and look at a palm tree, even the tallest, biggest palm trees, those ones along Hollywood Boulevard in that Morrissey video, that those are giant plants and those aren't trunks. Those are stems. Yeah. That is pretty cool. And a botanist will sell you that. Someone else not as hung up on the botany might say, well, you know what, they function as trees, so smarty. So take that fact and stick it where the sun don't shine. And then that's kind of the end of that conversation because they just got hostile. Well, no, somebody comes in and says, peas, peas children. Let's put it like this. It's a little of both. Palms are upright tree form plants. And everyone

says, thank you. Happy International Tolerance Day, everybody. That's right. But palms are closer, categorically speaking, to grasses and grains, like something like corn, than it is that mighty oak. So again, it's just a tall, giant plant, not a tree, a plant. And in fact, giant is a really good way to put it because a lot of the growth patterns that palms undertake are a form of gigantism. They're like plants on steroids, basically. So there you go. That's some good groundwork for the whole thing, if you ask me. I think so. Maybe we could start at angiosperms. There are about 300,000 of those bad boys, and these are flowering plants. And I think a lot of this stuff, people, it may ring a bell to like high school biology,

because when I was going through it, I was like, wait a minute, I learned about this many, many years ago. And it's all kind of coming back to me. But angiosperms are those flowering plants that have the seeds encased in a fruit. And it's the largest group in the plant kingdom. And within that, you've got monocots and dicots. And palms are monocots. And that's important because, I mean, you can't talk about palm trees without talking about the specificity of like how they grow and how they operate. Yeah, because they're in, in those details lies why they're not trees, why there's something else, why they're basically gigantic plants. So you said palm trees are monocots. Dicots are what we're used to when we look at a tree, things like elm trees, beech,

maple trees, all of those are dicots, right? And when you're looking at like a pine tree, or an evergreen usually, that's a gymnosperm. That's like a completely different kind of plant altogether. It doesn't have its seeds in a fruit. It bears its seeds on like the outside of like a cone or something. Totally different thing. We don't need to talk about gymnosperms again. Instead, we're talking about monocots and dicots, both angiosperms. Right. And if you've ever planted a little dicot seedling, the first thing you're going to notice when it, when it pops up out of the ground is you're going to have two, I think it's called a cotyledon. Yeah. I think so, yeah. And you're going to see two of those and it's very, you know,

that's why it's called a dicot because there's two. A monocot like a palm will only have one. Yeah. Cotyledon is just the first leaves that come out of a sprout. And so you've got two, and like you said with the monocot, you've got one. That's a big difference, but that's surely not a big enough difference to be like, well, a palm is not even close to a tree. It's something totally different. You're right. Yeah. It goes on, I guess is what I'm trying to say. The differences continue. It does. If you look at a dicot leaf, if you take like a maple leaf or an oak tree leaf and you look at the back of it or at the front, but you can really get a good look at the back or hold it up in the sun, you'll see the little web-like pattern of veins coming off from that

central stem on a leaf. That's different on a dicot, on a monocot. It does not do that. They run parallel. Yeah, lengthwise. Those little veins do. Sure. From like rear to tip, that's your vein right there. Just the tip. There's also, dicots have something called a cambium layer, and this is really important. To me, this is the big differentiator between a palm tree and a dicot tree, like a maple tree, right? Yeah. The big difference is that palm trees don't make wood, and dicot trees like a maple tree does, and it does that because it has what's called secondary growth, where it has a bunch of cells, xylem and phloem cells, which are vascular tissues, and they line up in a circle, and they form a ring in this nice, tight pattern, and they grow

outward, and outward, and outward every year, so that if you cut a tree down and look at the stump that's left, you see rings, and those rings are annual growth of springwood and autumn wood, but the upshot is, is it's actually growing wood every year as the tree grows outward. It gains girth, and that is secondary growth, and the big distinction between monocots and dicots is that monocots don't have secondary growth. They don't grow like that. They don't grow outward. They grow upward. That's a huge distinction. Yeah, and this is where it can get a little word-parcy. Monocots generally do not have secondary growth. Palm trees do have a kind of secondary growth, but it's not real secondary growth. I think it's...

What's the word for it? Anomalous secondary growth. Is that the one? Yeah, anomalous secondary growth. So every plant has primary growth. If you go and you shouldn't do this because it's bad for the tree, but if you went and carved your name into a mighty oak, that's not going to grow up. That's not going to be 10 feet above your head in 30 years because that tree's going outward. A palm tree, like you said, it grows from the top, so when you see a palm, you're going to generally see those palm fronds sticking out of the top of it, and if you say, yeah, but there's some underneath it too, those are just fronds that haven't fallen off yet on the way up. Right, exactly. So another way to put it is that palm trees grow

up, they don't grow out. Right, but they do have girth in some cases. I know. Girth, just the tip growing wood. Good Lord. Oh man. The ad sales people are blushing. I know. Who saw this coming? So yeah, they do have girth, but they have girth for a totally different reason, and you can look at a palm tree and be like, yeah, it's huge, it's thick, it's a trunk. Some of them are really thick too at the bottom. Yeah, I think the biggest one gets to three feet in diameter. That's a big old trunk, but the thing is if you cut a palm tree down and you look down inside of it, you're not going to see neat pattern of tight rings of those xylem and phloem cells. They do have xylem and phloem cells because those are vascular cells. They carry

water, minerals, sugars throughout the plant. So all plants and trees have xylem and phloem cells, but in a monocot like a palm tree, they grow just kind of willy nilly and they grow upward. What gives the palm tree its girth is when those vascular cells themselves grow in size. So you got more vascular cells growing up through the plant, through the stem of the plant, which you think is a trunk. You have more of them and then they increase in size. That actually increases the girth of the stem, but the stem itself is not growing outward. It's not adding layers of growth outward because that would be secondary growth and monocots don't engage in secondary growth. That's right. And the other really cool thing about a palm is, and one of the things that

separates monocots from dicots, is that monocots don't have that central tap root. So if a storm came along and pulled up a palm tree, you would see where basically, well, it's about to call it a trunk. We'll probably call it a trunk here and there, but it is a stem. Where the stem meets the ground, if it's uprooted, you'll just see just a spider web of smaller roots. It doesn't have this big one central tap root from which the other roots go. It comes straight from the base of that stem. That's right. And those are called, I think we'll get into it a little bit later, but it's called Amvititious Root Growth, right? Yeah, which is not super deep. I think the deepest you're going to find is maybe a few feet, but they really go out. Yeah, like 50 feet out from the trunk in

either direction. It's really something to see. But the problem is that also makes them often susceptible to being blown over in hurricanes because they often grow along the coast. Yeah. And if it's a shallow, grounded area, you can, a lot of times you can see a lot of that root system sort of sitting level with the ground. It's neat in some kinds, I think, including king palms, maybe royal palms. Those are nice. They look like big fat cigars growing out of the bottom of the tree at the base. It's pretty cool looking. Should we take a break? Oh, man, you just, you took the words right out of my mouth. I think that's a good teaser for the first part. Yeah, I say we take a break and let the ad salespeople do their thing.

Are they going to read the ads? We'll find out. Okay. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So it turns out the ad salespeople did not read the ads, but they did sell them.

And we appreciate them for that. So palms are actually super duper old. Some of the oldest plant fossils we've turned up, and by we, I mean you and me specifically, are palm fronds that are upwards of 70 million years old. But they think that they're actually much older than that because there's a theory that palms are found all over the world because they were growing on Gondwana, which is part of a supercontinent. After Pangea started to break up, Gondwana was one of the big massive pieces of earth that started to break up between 180 and 145 million years ago. And they think the palms were like, goodbye, family, goodbye, as the as the land spread out and formed the continents as we know them today.

And then started to do all sorts of weird stuff as they evolved in isolation from one another. That's right. And weird stuff, meaning there can be tiny palms that are about, you know, five to eight inches tall. There is, and I encourage people to safely look up some of these, because it is pretty amazing to see the variety. Like when you look up the wax palm, these are the ones I think generally found in South America that are so tall and skinny. I mean, you think the ones, some of those in LA are tall and skinny. Yeah. Nothing compared to these wax palms where you look at them and they just seem to sort of defy gravity. And you wonder, how are they not just snapping in half constantly with

wind? It's anomalous secondary growth. That's the answer. But those wax palms grow in the mountains, in the Andes. So if you climbed up one of them, I think they're up to 200 feet tall, which is what, about 70 meters tall. And you fell off the top, it get even worse, because you'd also be falling off a mountain. So you don't want to climb a wax palm unless you're just a dummy. That's right. Those stems that we talked about, the, what most people might call a trunk. Like we said earlier, they do vary wildly. Some of them are very small, just a few millimeters. And then those, you know, I have different kinds that are my favorites, but one of my favorites are those really big, thick, stemmed ones that are sort of low to the ground, very big around,

and have big, just sort of almost like a fireworks display of blooms. Like a Palmetto? No, not a Palmetto. Palmetto is, I don't think you can really see the trunk very much, can you? Those are more shrubby. Saw Palmetto, I think, yeah, I think they get tall after a while. They stay short. And then, and then they achieve the correct girth, and then they grow longer. But I mean, there's 2,500. So I'm sure there is a variety of something to suit your fancy, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's exactly right. And that one that grows only to be five inches tall and has a stem just a few millimeters thick, that one's called Dipsis Minuta. And it's pretty cute. That was not planned, by the way. Really? Yeah. I don't buy that. I

swear. I'll photocopy, I'll scan this page and send it to you, and you will not see it on there. Well, that's because Yumi is standing with a big cue card in front of you. That's right. That's how I could get away with this, but you figured me out. I can't, I think the one that we have in our backyard is a windmill palm. And we planted it when we first got to Atlanta. Emily worked as a producer on a TV commercial. And sometimes you might have noticed this a little bit with the TV show. Sometimes there's things that you get for a TV show or commercial or a movie that you can't return or do anything with. And so at the end of the job, they'll be like, who wants this whatever that we can't do anything with? And Emily said,

ooh, we would love that palm tree. Nice. And it was kind of small, and we planted it here in Atlanta, and it is really flourished. They are very easy to take care of. You don't really do anything. And they have managed to, and this is kind of one of the points of how robust they can be, even though they generally grow in the tropical areas around the world. This thing has had plenty of snow on it and plenty of hard freezes in Atlanta over the years, and it's just as healthy as can be. Yeah. Now, there's some palms that can thrive in zone 5B I saw, which is like South Nebraska and South Iowa. The needle palm does just fine there. So yeah. Jersey shore palms.

That's it. Yeah. It has like bleached orange spikes rather than green fronds. That wasn't written down either. I like that one. But yeah, it's just like 2,500 plus species. They're going to learn to adapt everywhere, and they've been around for hundreds of millions of years. So they've actually gotten pretty good at doing things like putting up with snow, which is surprising because again, you kind of associate the palms with like a tropical rainforest. And for good reason, because they are found a lot in tropical rainforests all throughout around, you know, right above and below the equator around the world. Apparently in the Amazon, they make up 60% of all the trees that you'll find

there. So they're pretty successful as far as plants go, gigantic plants. That's right. Should we talk a little bit about what makes up a palm tree? We've talked a little bit about it. You know, there are those roots that extend way, way out in a pretty shallow manner. There is that elongated stem. And one thing you'll notice when you're looking at a palm stem, or if you want to go up and hug one of those guys is sometimes you might get hurt. It doesn't have bark. It has the scars of fronds that came before. And depending on what kind of tree that is, it could be, it can be kind of smooth, but usually they're kind of rough. And sometimes they're really rough and kind of pointy and spiky. Yeah, for sure. I think people kind of trim

those kind back a little bit. But I was also reading about overtrimming them that you don't really want to trim them too much. And you definitely don't want to trim any kind of palm frond that isn't totally brown and crusty, musty. Because if it's not, even if it's yellow, that means that there's still a bunch of nutrient stores in there just hanging out. And the palm is like, hey, you just took a lot of my energy away. So you want them typically either fall off naturally like they do, or wait until they're just so brown and desiccated that even you can tell this palm frond can be taken off without hurting the tree. It's pretty obvious. It is pretty obvious. But what I thought was really interesting is the idea that that's not bark.

Those are just like leaf remains. The remains of basically where the leaf hit the tree at one time. And it looks, if you look, Dave points this out, and I never really put it into words before, but it's exactly true. It looks like the palm fronds have been moving down the base of the tree, forming this trunk all the way down, or forming the bark all the way down. But really, the stem has been growing up and out of each leaf scar that's left behind that forms what looks like the bark. So it's almost like an optical illusion of palm tree, yes. Yeah, I kind of get what he's saying there. Like, have you ever driven next to a car and the wheels are spinning so fast that they start to look like they're spinning backwards

much more slowly? I think it's akin to that. Do you know what I thought you were going to say? Is that thing where the car next to you, you see out of your peripheral vision, starts to move and you think you're rolling forward and you freak out a little bit and go, oh my god. Yeah, that's even better. I like that one even more. But it has nothing to do with palm trees? No, it does because they're all optical illusions. Should we talk a bit about... Well, we talked about how they grow. They grow from the top. When those leaves pop out of the top, it's called a spear, and it pops out of what's called the apical meristem or the apical meristem. And that's the thing that's... If a tree, if there were a

dicot, that's where the wood would be growing from, but it's not. It depends. So they both have apical meristems from what I can tell, but the tree has a lateral meristem as well, and that's where that girth around the sides grows to make it wider. Yeah, the woody girth. But the thing, the another thing that differentiates the palm tree from a dicot tree is that a dicot tree has a bunch of different places where it has the apical meristem. And those we call branches, the place where branches grow off. So an apical meristem is wherever primary growth, which is upright vertical growth of a plant comes from, like a maple tree has a bunch of them. Those are the branches and then eventually smaller branches and even into the leaves. That's all apical

meristem growth. A palm tree has one place, aside from the roots, one place on the entire plant where it is growing. Everything else is already grown, gone, left a scar behind, or it even looks like it's growing, but it's already grown and it's just sitting there, photosynthesizing like a big old palm front. But right in the middle of the top of the plant is the apical meristem. And that's where those new leaves shoot up from. And that's where the xylem and phloem divide and that growth occurs. And that's it. There's the one spot and that's it for the palm. Yeah. And if you have a palm near you and it's low enough to see the top of it pretty well, you will see many times among all those beautiful green fronds, sometimes like

big windmill fans, you'll see that little spiky thing sticking kind of straight up. And that's called the spear and it will unfold into the frond and it will become a beautiful frond at one point. It's almost like a caterpillar having a beautiful butterfly. Yeah. Except there's a leaf. Except there's a leaf. And if you've ever seen the palms that have, you know, we talked about the stem, how it's just sort of that rough scar all the way up. Sometimes you'll see them that have a really smooth green part that kind of looks like, and we'll get to coconuts, kind of looks like the very outside of a big coconut. That's called the crown shaft. The king palm is famous for these. And that's that little smooth

green section between where the trunk is rough and where the leaves pop out of the top. Right. And all those are like layered leaves folded around the top of the stem. And as they, as those leaves unfold and become fronds and hang out and photosynthesize and then the energy stores that they have is used up and they fall off, those kinds of palms, they fall off very cleanly. So compared to other rougher, rougher exterior palms, like a king palm is very smooth, even below the crown shaft where it's kind of gray and layered in horizontal stripes. That's, but those are still scars left from the leaves that used to be attached there that unfolded at the crown shaft and grew and lived and died and then fell off.

There's so many weird sexual innuendos with palm trees. Yeah. I had no idea. No idea. It explains a lot about how I felt about palm trees for a long time. I had no idea why. It probably doesn't hurt that we're 12 years old as well. Because there are plenty of people out there like, what are they even talking about? Yeah, that's true. Those are eight years old people. So let's talk about these palm fronds or the palm leaves. There are a few different kind of shapes they can take. There's the feather-like penate. If you see a coconut palm, this is what you're going to see. It has a couple of rows of those leaves kind of sprawling out from that

central rib down the middle. That rib is called a ratchus and where it meets, and this is a lot of sort of technical talk here, but the thick part where it actually meets the trunk, that's called the pediol. Yeah, where the ratchus meets the trunk, right? That's right. And then those leaves are all individual. They're disconnected. The only place where they join is at that rack, is at that central rib, but other than that, they're not connected, which makes them different from a palmate type of frond. Those are good. Those are really good. I think palmate might be my favorite, where they seem disconnected, but if you follow them back to their terminal point where they connect to the branch, you'll see that they're all connected at one central point and they're kind

of fanned out almost in a circle or semi-circle, radiating away from that one central point where they're all connected. That central point is called the hastula. That's palmate. That's another good one. Then there's costa palmate, right? Yeah, the costa palmate is a little bit of both. If you like a little penate, you like a little palmate, then you get your costa palmate. That is the fan shape as well, and it is attached to a central rib called a costa, and that extends from that petiole into that leaf blade. It's interesting, when these things fall off, those fan-shaped ones, and you gather them off the ground, you really get a sense of their potential uses, which we'll talk about that stuff a

little bit later, but primitive uses as a fan or as a broom, or there are all kinds of things when you have a big handful of those dead palm fronds, you can see even here in modern times. I could see how this could be useful. Yeah. Just think about how much thought the writers of Gilligan's Island put into that. Yeah, right? I can't watch that show anymore. How about you? I haven't tried it a long time. Why not? I think it just ran its course in my brain. It was great when I was a younger person, and now I'm like, I can't watch this. Yeah, I had a recurring dream when I was a kid. The first recurring dream I remember had to do with Gilligan's Island, but it was scary.

The boat was washed ashore on the beach, and I remember I was in the back hiding from somebody who was trying to get me or something, but I had that dream over and over for a while. Wait a minute. Somebody was trying to get you while you were in the ship that was being shipwrecked? No, it had already been shipwrecked, and it was just like a shipwrecked boat on shore that I was hiding behind a backseat. Did you ever figure out who it was? No. I don't think I've ever had a recurring dream. All of my dreams are all original material every time. Huh, that's interesting. I think so, too. Did you have imaginary friends? No. No? No, they seemed silly and superfluous to me. Someone just, the only reason I thought of

that is because someone sent that in as a request and saying that imaginary friends is a sign of later successes in various ways, supposedly. Well, that explains a lot as well. No, but look at you now. No, but think about how successful I could be if I had had imaginary friends. I could be president of the world. My daughter has what she calls ghost friends and always has and now ghost parents, and we wonder sometimes if that is something to do with being adopted. Oh, yeah. Or if it's just the regular old imaginary friend thing with kids. Or your house is haunted and she can see things you can't. Or that. That's number three. It'd be pretty awesome. I mean, she's spelling it out for you, Chuck, right there. All right.

Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll talk about those not so beautiful palm flowers right after this. In this situation, if you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But

just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. If you've ever walked past a palm tree and you've seen a, what looks like a blob of yellow or orange, orange is a big one. Yeah. I mean, what do they even look like? They look like just little tiny, great bunches,

but not really. They're not very attractive to me, but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Those are palm, the flower of the palm tree. So one thing I have to say, though, is Chuck, you would probably have your eyes open if you spend a little time on Google images, looking at different palm inflorescences. Some of them are okay. Yeah. There's some that are just straight up dazzling. I saw one that was like a nice pink and it looked like a really tight, like, you know, sometimes people have like dreadlocks that are, have been around so long, they actually merged into one big dread. Sure. It looks like that, but like a hot pinkish purple.

Yes. But a hot pinkish purple version of that. It's very pretty. And again, there's like 2,500 or more species of palm. So there's a lot of different variety. But that said, I agree with you, most of the palm influences, influences I've ever seen are not pretty at all. I think what my problem is, is I feel like it disturbs even the pretty ones. It doesn't jibe with the rest of the look. Yeah. So it looks like, like a really attractive person wearing maybe a really nice hat, but that doesn't go with the rest of the outfit. Okay. All right. I totally get your meaning. I think you nailed it. It just doesn't seem to fit in, but you keep calling them inflorescences instead of flowers. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, inflorescence is just

another name for a palm flower. And a palm is a, it's an angiosperm, which is by definition a flowering plant. It just doesn't look like what you and I would think of as flowers, but that's exactly what it is. And with the palm, from what I can tell, everything is a frond. It's some sort, some version of a frond, and the inflorescence is no exception. It's a specialized weirdo version of the palm frond that grows out. And depending on the kind of palm, it's going to have either male flowers, female flowers, or it's going to have male and female flowers, in which case it's self-pollinating. And the upshot of all this is, is when the female flowers get pollinated, they will produce fruit. And because we're talking about 2,500 different

species of palms, you get a lot of different kinds of fruit that come along. Yeah. It's, it's pretty interesting actually. Like if you look at your standard coconut palm, that has both the male and female parts. So that makes it malicious. This is stuff that we learned in high school biology again. Haven't seen that word in so long. I know. I even was calling it mono-ishus for a while. I was like, I know that's not right. That's what I was calling. I just can't remember. No, it's manishus and daishus. Those O's are silent. And daishus palms only have male flowers or female flowers. And like you said, depending on the fruit, you know, if you're, if you're a coconut palm, then you're going to have both. But you got to fertilize that, that

female flower. If you're a date palm, it's daishus. So you can only harvest from the female tree. But you need to have both again to fertilize and get that delicious bad date. But that is, dates are actually a fruit from palms, from appropriately enough date palms. I didn't know that. I didn't either. And dates are delicious in this, researching this, maybe want this. But I, if I had to choose, I'm a fig person for sure. Are figs from a palm? No. No, fig tree. Yeah. But there's like, you know, dried fruit dates and figs. They're so, they're so, you know, they seem to go hand in hand. So I don't think you have to choose, which is just a stupid thing to even bring up. I'm sorry I did. Well, I don't know

that I've ever had, in fact, I can almost say certainly I've never had a fresh date. Like right off of a tree, you mean? Yeah. Like the, you know, not dried, not like raisins or fig style, but you know, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the bad date, those are big juicy dates, bad dates. That's right. That poor monkey. I mean, it was an evil monkey, but I think he was trained to be evil. Oh, you think? With the Nazi salute? Yes. I don't think he was born knowing how to do that. I think he was trained to do that and it made him a bad, bad monkey, but I still don't think he deserved to be poisoned by bad dates. You know, that movie is, has been under fire in recent

years because of the nature of Indy's relationship with, with Marion and how old she was. Oh yeah. And he's also like fairly rough with her as well. Yeah. But there's, there's those lines at the beginning where he talks about, you know, you know what you were doing, you know, I was a child or whatever. And I think for many years, everyone was just like, yeah, whatever. And then someone's like, wait a minute, how much of a child was she? Right. And I think people have tried to do the math over the years to work it out. So with the time period where it wasn't that bad. But I do know that in this something I talked on movie crush a little bit about, but Lucas and Spielberg,

when they were discussing it all at the beginning, one of them was pushing at the time firm to make it like creepy like, no man, let's make it really young and make it really kind of a bad thing that he did. Was it George Lucas doing that? I think it might have been. I don't know. I should look all this stuff up. So I'm not, you know, I'm glad Spielberg was like, yeah, yeah, great idea. Great idea. We'll definitely workshop that later. Right. Anyway, bad dates. Bad dates. And dates, by the way, Chuck, are droops as are all palm fruits. Did you know that? I didn't know that. But I did know that they were similar to peaches and olives. And cream. And say what? Peaches and cream. Yeah, peaches and cream in the way that they

they had that hard outer that kind of stony like covering around the seed. Right. But they're usually also covered with some sort of flesh that we like to eat. That's not always the case. So I think coconuts are the reverse of that. So like if you're eating like a peach, the seed itself is that hard is inside the hard pit in the fruit. Right. That is not the seed. No, a coconut is the opposite of that. It's got that hard woody outer shell. You can knock, knock, knock on just and have some fun with the exit part. It's exactly right. Chuck, nice. That you're actually, no, that's the endocarp, the hardest part that you knock on. The exocarp. I thought you were talking about the hard green outer most layer.

No, that would be the exocarp. The endocarp is the hard brown woody one that you can knock on. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can play that you can use as a bowling ball on Gilligan's Island. Exactly. Or like a Tiki cocktail cup. Right. All again on Gilligan's Island. And it's the stuff inside that, that's the actual seed. And that's what we eat in the coconut, the endosperm and the liquid endosperm, the stuff you eat from a coconut. That's actually like the seed that you're eating, whereas like a peach, you're eating the outside, the meat that's outside of the, of the seed. Right. And that endosperm is the, the solid part is that flesh, that white deliciousness. Coconut meat. And then the coconut water is the liquid endosperm. So if you,

next time your friend is having a coconut water, just go up to them and say, enjoy the liquid endosperm. And they'll say, what are you talking about? You can't say stuff like that. They'll do, they'll do a spit take. I hope not. Cause that coconut water is delicious. It is inexpensive too. And if you're like, well, wait a minute, I thought coconut water was coconut milk. You are wrong, wrong, wrong. No. Coconut milk is taking coconut meat, grading it up into a paste and then adding water to that, that's coconut milk. That's delicious too. It is. It's super high in fat, but they're really healthy fats. I understand. That's a good fat in it. I'm not a big sort of Caribbean drink cocktail guy.

Oh, you don't like the tinky drinks? No, I'm not really into them. They're just a little too sweet. I mean, maybe one of them, but they're a little sweet for me, but that, that coconut milk man with some, with some rum is a really nice combination. And you know, people have been drinking that for eons for good reason. They sure have. You know, what else they've been drinking even longer than that, Chuck. A little something called palm wine. Oh yeah. So I didn't know that this existed, but it sounds awesome. But there are a lot of different kinds of palm species that you can tap, including I think coconut palms and date palms and the Chilean wine palm,

which they were like, well, yeah, of course, but you can tap the sap of these things. And what comes out context the air and just a little bit amount of like microbes in the air that come in contact with this stuff immediately cause it to start to ferment. And within hours, it has gone from palm sap to an alcoholic beverage. And then hours after that, within about a day or so of it being tapped, it turns into vinegar. So you have to drink this stuff, which turns into like a 4% alcoholic drink just by sitting out in the air a few hours after it's tapped within a day of tapping it. Yeah, which is why it is one of the oldest boozes because you could get it quickly and pretty naturally. Yeah, you didn't have to do

anything for it. And apparently they've caught monkeys actually drinking it too. Oh yeah. Yeah, like they, I think they found evidence that of humans drinking it as far back as 18,000 years ago. I say very long time. And that because they've caught like primates, other primates drinking it's possible that it goes even further back in our evolutionary history. Very interesting. I thought so too. There's also palm oil that is in food products. It's in a lot of skin products. It is sort of an environmental disaster these days. There are plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, where you basically you just clear cut forest to plant more palms to get palm oil and getting quote unquote, sustainably sourced palm oil is difficult to impossible for your products.

There are some people that say there is no such thing and that if something is labeled officially sustainable, they're like, well, no, just go back 15 or 20 years and there was once natural forest growth there too. So it's kind of a meaningless title when just a handful of years have to go by before you say, oh, no, no, no, this palm field was here already. Right. Like from what I understand, that's just not the case. Yeah, that was one of those things where I looked into it. I was like, okay, another reason to be pessimistic and lose hope. There's the acai, those little acai berries. I didn't know they came from palms. Is it acai? I thought it was acai. Oh, I've always said acai, but it's probably acai. I guess I've never said it out loud.

So there, it's like supposed to be a superfood rich in antioxidants. And I was like, that rings a bell. We did an episode on antioxidants. Did we, did we surmise that it's BS? And I went back and I read a transcript of it and it may be. So take that however you like, but it definitely does have all sorts of antioxidants, including anthocyanins, because that's where it has its purple color from. The acai, acai does? Okay. Is it really acai? I feel foolish. Acai. I've never heard it said. Well, now you have from your good pal, Josh. I don't think I've ever said it out loud until now in front of millions of people.

Right. So it's no biggie. Yeah. You got the hearts of palm, of course, that you'll find usually in a can on a shelf in your grocery store. That's the, that's the apical Maristam, Chuck. That is, it's just about to say that. And it is right there at the core. You get them in Hawaii and Costa Rica or some places in South America. And you chop that thing down. And it's got that little, that little tinder core. And the reason it's usually in a can is because it's dead and lasts very long. Yes. So it's pickled typically, right? Yeah. What about bedal nuts? Did you know about those before? Because I had heard of them, but I had no idea what the deal was. I knew it. I knew about them because I know that chewing them, which is popular in certain

Asian countries is, can be really bad for you. It can make your teeth like red and black and give you cancer, but it's a stimulant, right? Yeah. It gives you pretty good butt. So it all works out in the end. Does it really? Something like 20% of the people in the world chew bedal nuts. And that makes it the fourth most used psychoactive material, I guess, or substance after nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, and then bedal nuts. What about rattan, if you've ever been to Pier 1 import since that in a wicker, what are those things called? The big bowl? Oh, a papasan chair. A papasan. That is made from palm rattan, from rattan palms. And it's very hardy. And you know how I mentioned that those

fronds are very useful. Like this is the stuff over the years that they use fronds for roof tops and rattan to make really strong furniture, very useful. Yeah. I had no idea, but rattan has really wicked, mean barbs and thorns sticking off of it because it uses it to climb up other trees. And the stem is really pliable. It's not upright, but it grows vertically, but it's like a vine. And apparently the stem can get up to like 500 feet long. It's a lot of pure one wicker. A lot of wicker. What was the name of that chair? Do you remember the chair that they would sit in for prom pictures in the 70s? The Isaac Hayes? Black Moses chair? Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It's like a throne sort of. Exactly. Rattan throne. That's exactly right.

That's a heck of a chair too. So I guess we could finish up with a couple of little fun facts. One of them, Dave included a few of these. The double coconut palm has, I don't know if it's the largest seed. Is it the largest one in the world? Yes. Okay. A mature coconut from that double coconut palm can weigh about 90 pounds. And the seed inside is about 55. And Dave said something about the way they look. I can't remember exactly how he put it. Suggestive. Suggestive. And I looked it up and it looks like a butt. Oh, that's not what it suggested to me. I thought it looked like a butt in an anus. Okay. Did you think it looked like female parts? No. Just come around to the other side of a dude. Oh, you thought it looked like a

a scrotal sack? Yes. Yeah, well put. I thought it looked like a butt in a butthole. No, it looked like, I mean, I could see how you would think that, but it looked like a scrotal sack to me. I thought that was the avocado. That's put, yeah, for sure. Avocado's got it going on too. I've got one more fact. What else do you have? Nothing. I want to hear your last fact. Well, I think it'd be kind of fun to just talk about what happened in Florida with all those palms. Oh, yeah, I'd love to do that. This is a good one. The reason Florida has so many palms is because of a shipwreck. In January of 1878, the Spanish Brigantine, the Providencia, crash landed with a bunch of coconuts on board. Yeah, coconuts and a bunch of other stuff,

but there were like 20,000 coconuts and a guy named William Lanehart, who was one of the early pioneers along this settlers of European descent, I should say, along this stretch of Florida beach where this shipwreck happened, bought the whole shipwreck and all of its cargo for like $20 and proceeded to try to sell the coconuts for, what was it, like, two cents each or a half a cent? Yeah, two and a half cents, and he only sold about a thousand of the 20,000. But still, it's like a couple hundred bucks. He like, you know, Oh, sure. Made his money back. Yeah, 10 times over. And then he said, I think I'm just going to plant the rest of these. I think it'd be easier

than trying to drum up a market for these things. And that's it. That's where Palm Beach is now. Yeah, all of the coconut palms that you see there are not native. They are descended from that original shipwreck cargo of coconuts. Very, very cool. It is. Very cool indeed. And also, Chuck, they mentioned Henry Flagler in there. It's founding Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Oh, yeah. Flagler College. That's right. And Flagler County. He was like an old Ford executive who made his money, well, from working at Ford early on and then started like a railroad and then started like founded Palm Beach and was just fabulously wealthy. But you know, I know we've talked about going to Providence, Rhode Island and touring some of those old

gilded age mansions. He has one in Palm Beach. So if you ever make your way down to Palm Beach, go see the Flagler House Museum. It's one of the most amazing houses you will ever walk in in your entire life. It's astounding. I will check that out. My bestie friend from high school, Rad, the map drawer, the cartographer. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. He went to Flagler. So I went to, and this was in St. Augustine though, but I went to Flagler a couple of times in St. Augustine is a lovely town. Well, just make your way a little further south a couple hours down to Palm Beach and check out Flagler House. I'll do it. Okay. Well, since Chuck said I'll do it, that means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Josh and the Simpsons.

I'm sure you saw this. I figured we could just answer this on the air. So I think I know the answer. I was worried about this. Hey, guys, that we were going to read it. Oh, okay. Hey, guys, just listen to the Hot Dog episode. I was a little surprised that Josh let the whole episode go by without citing Homer's famous line about hot dogs from the episode where he tries to get into the grease business. Then I realized this is a phenomenon I've noticed several times. Like Josh, I'm a Simpson super fan. So I feel like I have to take issue with everyone who has written in to say, you missed this quote or citation. On the contrary, what's happening, I think, is Josh's biting his tongue and letting, I would guess, one to three opportunities pass by per episode. Wow. Because

he doesn't want to be known primarily as that Simpsons dork and avoid owing royalties to Matt Graining. Josh, please validate my hunch. That is from G. Thanks, G. You're not holding your tongue, are you? Occasionally, I do, actually. Oh, very, very rarely. I think G is giving me way too much credit and at the risk of sounding like a fraudulent Simpsons fan, there are a ton of references that people will write in and be like, you walked right past this one and I'll be like, I don't remember that one at all or I totally forgot about it. Didn't think about that. But every once in a while, I will hold it back because you just have to keep the proportion of Simpsons fandom like at a certain threshold. Other than that, stuff you should know is like, it's stuff you should know

the Simpsons fans. We're more well rounded than that. So yes, every once in a while, I do hold. But not three times an episode. No, that's what I'm saying. That's over-crediting me for sure. All right, fantastic. Well, thanks again, Gene. If you want to be like G and ask a question or see if your hunch is confirmed, send it to us via email to stuffpodcasts.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.