Palm Trees by Another Name

The Arecaceae are perennial flowering plants. Their form can be as climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants. They are all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees. There are 2,600 species of Arecaceae known, most of them restricted to tropical and subtropical climates. Most palms have large, compound, evergreen leaves (known as fronds) arranged at the top of an unbranched stem. Palms exhibit enormous diversity and inhabit nearly every type of habitat within their range, from rainforests to deserts.

Modern monocots appear in the fossil record around 80 million years ago, although specific species of Arecaceae appeared 94 million years ago, according to fossilized pollen. By 60 million years ago, many of the modern specialized palms became widespread and common, much more widespread than they are today.

The use of palms is as old or older than human civilization, starting with cultivating the date palm in the Middle East some 5,000 or more years ago. Date wood, pits for storing dates, and other remains of the date palm have been found in Mesopotamian sites. If not for the date palm, human expansion into the hot and barren parts of the “old” world would have been much more difficult. The date palm provided food which was easily stored and carried on long journeys. It provided shade and protection from the desert winds. It yielded such a variety of products that practically all parts of the palm had a useful purpose.

The economic importance of Arecaceae includes coconut products, oils, dates, palm syrup, ivory nuts, carnauba wax, rattan cane, raffia, and palm wood. There are a number of palms that can be used to make wine, at least one of which turns to vinegar within a day.

It kind of makes me want to go out and hug a palm tree, for without palms, who knows how long it might have taken humans to reach this point in their civilization? Which makes me wonder, would we have grown up any wiser if we had taken a slower path to get here? Or would that early difficulty of exploring the deserts have burned us into tighter powder kegs of anger that made our history even more bloody than what we experienced?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecaceae