Are Palm Trees Symmetrical?

[00:00:01]Hi everybody. Now, I've always wondered, are palm trees symmetrical?

[00:00:09]And I also wonder if that's the reason why I like palm trees because looking around my garden, I tend to choose plants that do have a symmetrical look about them.

[00:00:26]And then I took a closer look at this particular drachic carpus fortuni which is blooming lovely up at the top there.

[00:00:38]Try and get a an angle to show that.

[00:00:45]And I thought to myself, this actually looks really symmetrical.

[00:00:55]And from this angle, for example, we start with this bottom leaf here and go up. I'm going straight up here.

[00:01:06]There's a leaf every time sort of in the middle of a leaf.

[00:01:13]And this can be seen on other parts of the palm tree as well.

[00:01:19]For example, I can find a bit of a gap to get into here. If you look at the leaf bases, you can see that there's two next to each other, two next to each other, two next to each other. And you can go all the way up through the middle of these all the way the whole way up right to the crown, right to the growing point.

[00:01:42]And it's 2 by two. Well, it certainly, you know, there's a gap where nothing is growing within this gap here the whole way up.

[00:01:56]So, I thought there's got to be something to this.

[00:01:59]So, I did a bit of research and I found out some interesting information which I thought I'd share with you.

[00:02:08]But just to pause for a moment, uh I wanted to thank everybody from my previous video who expressed concern and sympathy um and wished me goodwill um with my ankle injury from my previous video. I'm doing all right. I'm doing fine. Thank you very much. Um the whole thing wasn't particularly painful, just very uncomfortable. So, um, I'm I'm on the mend, but I thought this week I'll just do a a quick video where I didn't have to move about so much and certainly didn't have to do any digging. Uh, I shan be doing that for probably another week. I think I'm probably a week away from doing anything strenuous. So, um, yeah, getting better. Uh, thank you very much for your concern.

[00:02:55]So, what did my research unveil, you may ask?

[00:02:59]And there's a couple of interesting points.

[00:03:05]The new growth that comes out of the top of the palm tree is predetermined.

[00:03:15]So within the top of the trunk there, there is the new growth coming or being decided um or kind of being born. I suppose the new petals and leaves are are kind of emerging from that within the trunk. So before you even see them come before you even see the spear come out, they're they're in there. And the pattern in which they form is formed really on two there's two things that are affecting that. One is the genetic makeup of the tree and trackpus fortuni tried to put a leaf out every 137.5° that means that um the first leaf on the tree it could be facing 0° the next leaf would be facing 137.5 the next one would be uh 270 uh five degrees if my math is correct and so on. But that's just one factor.

[00:04:25]The other factor really is what's already there, what's already packed into the the emerging spear kind of area.

[00:04:35]And whilst that should all be preset at the 137.5 degree um angles, it's not always the case because as a spear comes out, the wind might blow it and it'll be slightly offset and that kind of re rearranges everything there.

[00:04:56]And I think that must be what's happening because 135 137.5° shouldn't result in a constant line, a straight line of leaves.

[00:05:15]I think the wind's affecting it and um creating these gaps. There's another gap here. Look up and down there. There's maybe one leaf at the bottom there, although that's a bit twisted really. Maybe that's facing a different direction, but the whole way up there, there are no leaves. Maybe until that one up there.

[00:05:40]So anyway, in summary, no, palm trees aren't symmetrical. They have a symmetrical look about them, which is definitely something that I like. I like trees where you kind of you know what they're going to look like. They're predictable and you can plant multiple of them in the garden. They all kind of look the same. I enjoy that. I think that looks very pleasing to the eye.

[00:06:04]Um, but they they aren't they're not technically not symmetrical. Um, but yeah, they do certainly give that appearance.

[00:06:13]Let me know your thoughts. Do you agree with what I've said? Do you disagree?

[00:06:17]Here's the bamboo that I dug up last week.

[00:06:22]The four pots on the left there, all ready to recover. They've been getting plenty of rain this week, so don't no need to water them. Although, it's not going to rain today, so I might give them a bit of a soak in. Might take the opportunity.

[00:06:38]Now, in my last video, I was trying to create a gap here. Um, I didn't know that the fence panel was going to blow out this week. We've had really strong winds and um, so yeah, probably a bit too much of a gap there now. Probably could have done with leaving that for Syia and um, the lower branches of this tree just to give a bit more privacy uh, for this week. But of course, we will replace that panel.

[00:07:14]And that is going to be it for this week. So all that remains is for me to thank you very much for watching if indeed you still are.

[00:07:44]Hey, hey, hey.