My Show-and-Tell Kit

[JT in Japan]

Whenever I come to PT with a question, I always end up with a great many answers. This is a fruitful board because all the people involved are very into Palms and have scads of information to share. But I don't talk about palms to many people in my real world - at length - because they're not as interested. But today I was feeling different, so I put together a kit to do a little show-and-tell with some of them, to see if I could garner their interest.

I approached my barber, who has plenty of blooming flowers in her shop, my neighbourhood farmer, who grows hibiscus exclusively, and my neighbour, who has no interest in plants whatsoever.

Here's what I brought: The "kit" has five seedlings: Syagrus romannozoffiana, Trachy princeps, Syagrus weddellianum, Butyagrus, and Archo cunninghaminia. I also included some raw seeds along with some sprouting seeds in sphagnum moss. And I had photos on my iPad of all of the seedlings as mature trees.

I told them about the Syagrus family, and the step-child Butyagrus. The weddellianum in Japanese is called the Princess Palm, not the Wedding palm, so that excited my barber ("so cute!") who liked seeing the queen and princess together.

My farmer neighbour is progressive, and in the process of putting some of his hibiscus cuttings through an X-ray machine, turning out wild new colours in his blooms like orange or gradients, so he was very interested in the mule, and the inherited characteristics it has.

My non-interested neighbour offered me a beer while he flipped through the pics on my iPad, so that worked out well too. He said he wouldn't mind visiting Australia (while looking at the Bangalow).

I think they all got a kick out of my Trachy fortunei seeds from Vancouver. Palms in Canada! Who'd athunkit? The fact that I got 95% germination out of my test batch, and still have about 400 more seeds, excited them less.

All in all, they showed a respectable amount of genuine interest, and that was rewarding.

JT

[Pip]

Sounds like a fun day. Not sure how people around me would react if I did the same.

[PalmnutVN]

Full kudos to you for promoting the 'cause'....

Mind you, whenever I attempt to talk to anyone about palms, their eyes tend to glaze over after which, they rapidly excuse themselves....

[Neil C]

Good on you, spread the word. Are many Japanese familiar with the variegated Rhapis which hold a cult status over there?

Regards Neil

[Kai]

Very very cool! And a good choice to bring the "princess" palm.

[Pal Meir]

Very very cool! And a good choice to bring the "princess" palm.

In a Japanese women’s magazine of the 1970s or 80s I found this illustration of a Princess Palm (hime-yashi):