Gigantic palm

by Barbora Misakova

Sometimes I think that nature has no borders and there is always something what can surprise us. It this surprise has form of some little creatures living in the deepest seas or gigantic animals living billion years ago it always takes my breath away. My today's amazement is palm. Gigantic palm! Nick Cave in one of his songs sings that every beauty must die and these words could be suit on brand new species of palm which was identified on Thursday. This plant is significant not only by its hight but also its bizarre life cycle.This gigantic palm was discovered by one French family during their walk in remote part of Madagascar. Fine, you probably want to know what the "gigantic" really means. So imagine 18 meters high pyramid-shaped palm which leaves have in diameter five meters. Experts from London's Royal botanic gardens say this plant not only grows into great heights and has hundreds of flowers, but also every flower is capable to develop into fruit. This ability makes from this palm the largest flowering plants ever known. Xavier and Nathalie Metz who found this gigantic plant have their own cashew farm in Madagascar. When they discovered this enormously hight palm they just took a photo of it and put it on the web where this picture was found by John Dransfield, an expert on Madagascar's palms.He was fascinated and claimed that: "Clearly this was going to be an extremely exciting discovery and I just couldn't wait to examine specimens in detail."There were made some DNA analysis which proved that palm is from a palm tribe called Chuniophoeniceae which is very infrequent genus scattered mostly in Thailand and China and approved that this palm is a very significant discovery in a biological point of view.Madagascar is an island in the Indian Ocean and it is the fourth largest island. It is also a place where occur about 90 percent of plants which grow nowhere else in the world and with its more than 10 000 plant species is incredible source of biologic exploration. Just a number of more than 170 known palm species in Madagascar tells us about its unique.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080117/sc_afp/sciencespeciespalmmadagascar_080117000953;_ylt=Aol9R.YRVPYXOlb3W.FvkGis0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Posted by: Maria Vidlickova