Palms in your blood?

[Yunder Wækraus]

I was thinking the other day about why, exactly, I like tropical (and subtropical) plants so much. I've always thought it was because they were the first plants I saw as a child and the plants I associate with my extended family's Florida pioneering roots. But does it go deeper? Perhaps our love of palms has been shaped by generations of ancestors who encountered them. And to what degree does that palm love affect our current and former choices in latitude (which, somewhat roughly, correlates to plant hardiness)?

So here's the game I invite y'all to play. List the latitude of your current home, your birth town, the farthest north you've lived, the farthest south you've lived, and the latitude of the place where your surname-bearing ancestor lived in 1776. (I realize 1776 is a bit American-centric as dates go, but it seems like a fair baseline to see how many of us had ancestors in palmy locations by then.) For the purposes of having lived somewhere, I think you need to have spent at least two consecutive months in a place. I stayed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for six weeks between undergrad and grad school as as student, but I wouldn't say I lived there.

For your current latitude and the latitude of your ancestor, indicate whether palms are native to the area. (You can decide whether you want to name the species.)

Here are my details:

Current: 28.0895° N (Indialantic, FL) [Sabal, Serenoa repens]

Birth: 26.7153° N (West Palm, FL)

Farthest north lived: 54.8925° N (Carlisle, England)

Farthest south lived: 26.6845° N (Belle Glade, FL)

Paternal surname-bearing ancestor in 1776: 33.2799° N (Barnwell County, SC) [Sabal, R. hystrix]

[Tropicgardener]

Here are my details:

Current: 20.2687S (Airlie Beach, Queensland) [Archontophoenix alexandrae, Ptychosperma elegans, Livistona drudei, Livistona decora, Calamus australis, Calamus moti, Calamus radicalis]

Birth: 27.4710S (Brisbane, Queensland) [Archontophoenix cunninghamiana, Calamus muelleri, Linospadix monostachya, Livistona australis]

Furtherest south lived: 37.8141S (Melbourne, Victoria)

Furtherest North Lived: 13.3598 (Aurukun, Queensland) [Corypha utan, Nypa fruticans]

Paternal surname bearing ancestor: 51.5074 (London, England)

[Kim]

Are you going to crunch the resulting data and publish a scientific study with the results?

I am 100% certain that my generation of my family are the first to have close encounters with palms.

Current:  32.42N San Diego, California, USA, no native palms, but those that have become weeds: Washingtonia robusta and Phoenix canariensis

Birth:  34.943N Santa Maria, California, USA, no native palms, but the most commonly seen is Phoenix canariensis, well established in the area

Furthest south lived:  19.4725N Leilani Estates, Hawaii, USA, Pritchardia sp., climate is hospitable to most tropical palm species.

Furthest north lived:  43.5297 Aix-en-Provence, France, no native palms and I don't recall seeing any in town or surrounding areas.

Maternal surname bearing ancestor: 59.3293 Stockholm, Sweden (largest percentage of parental DNA traceable to a single locale) no native palms.

 

 

[Mohsen]

Hi Alex

Mine would contradict your theory about this is carries by gene and ancestors and where you lived or your first experience with your first plant...still, no doubt I got it in my blood

Current: 33.73236 South (Thornleigh,Sydney NSW)

Birth: 35.6892° N (Tehran,Iran]

Furtherest south lived: 50.7753 N (Aachen, Germany)

Furtherest North Lived: 33.73236 South (Thornleigh,Sydney NSW)

Paternal surname bearing ancestor: 34.0954° N ( Arak, Iran)

[Pal Meir]

57 minutes ago, Mohsen said:

Hi Alex

Mine would contradict your theory about this is carries by gene and ancestors and where you lived or your first experience with your first plant...still, no doubt I got it in my blood

Current: 33.73236 South (Thornleigh,Sydney NSW)

Birth: 35.6892° N (Tehran,Iran]

Furtherest south lived: 50.7753 N (Aachen, Germany)

Furtherest North Lived: 33.73236 South (Thornleigh,Sydney NSW)

Paternal surname bearing ancestor: 34.0954° N ( Arak, Iran)

Mohsen, did you still live in Tehran in November 1977? I was there twice with my yellow car.  And I had passed also the road near Arak (at Qom).
PS: I was born at 53°34’N, palms only in containers.

[Pal Meir]

And here my data in my yellow car:
Northern most: 63°28’N
Southern most: 35°05’S
Born: 53°34’N
Paternal 16th century: 52°06’N

First palm: Phoenix dactylifera 1958

[empireo22]

current: 27.94n

birth: 33.70n

furthest north: 51.5n

furthest south: 3.34s

and don't know about the last one. and I will add that the Mediterranean style gardens and palms are really growing on me.  

 

[Pal Meir]

And my palm gene I have inherited from my great-great-grandmother, here a photo from ca. 1900 with a date palm at 53°33’N:

[Mohsen]

3 hours ago, Pal Meir said:

Mohsen, did you still live in Tehran in November 1977? I was there twice with my yellow car.  And I had passed also the road near Arak (at Qom).
PS: I was born at 53°34’N, palms only in containers.

Pal, I lived in Tehran in nov 1977 for sure...where else could I go , I was only 15 month old  

[Pando]

22 hours ago, Yunder Wækraus said:

For the purposes of having lived somewhere, I think you need to have spent at least two consecutive months in a place.

For your current latitude and the latitude of your ancestor, indicate whether palms are native to the area. (You can decide whether you want to name the species.)

Current: 33 N
Birth: 58 N
Furthest south ever lived: 33 N
Furthest north ever lived: 59 N
Ancestor: possibly between 58-59N

6ft high snowbanks. NO palms. Ancestors had probably never even heard of such a thing as a palm tree in the 1700s, much less actually seen one.

I think I'm breaking your stats.

[DoomsDave]

Hmm.

Never had genomes tested, but all my ancestors came from Germany some as early as the 1700s (my father's side, anyway). Some came from Bavaria (Bayern), and others from Alsace-Lorraine, or Metz. (I assume that's all the further we have to go. Go back far enough, and we're all near the equator in Africa . . . )

I suspect Pal and I might share a Palmen-loving gross-gross-etc Oma somewhere in the mists of time. Maybe the same Roman Legions marched through our respective ancestors' villages on their way to visit Pando's ancestors, or even some of Kim's.

Furthest north lived: 41°35'44N

Furthest south 33:55 N.

No native palms in Ohio, trust me.

 

[sur4z]

I'll play;

Current: Palm Beach, Florida USA 26.7153 N  Sabals

Born: West Palm Beach, Florida USA 26.7153 N Sabals

Furthest North: Fairbanks, Alaska USA 64.8378 N  Cell Towers

Furthest South: Maracaibo, Venezuela 10.6545 N Roystonea oleracea

Paternal Ancestry: Jankoping, Sweden 57.7826  Cell Towers

I probably got my interest in palms from my father who moved to Florida from New Hampshire and was one of the first people to buy in a new subdivision that was populated with wild grown Sabals. When others bought in, he would ask them if they didn't want the Sabals on their property,he would take them. He ended up with over 40 in his yard not to mention the many Cocos.

[Yunder Wækraus]

I think my theory has been refuted :-)

[Las Palmas Norte]

I have no intentions of releasing detailed info of myself over the net. I do however inherit a fondness for plants in general, from my mothers side of the gene pool.

Cheers, Barrie.

[Pando]

1 hour ago, Yunder Wækraus said:

I think my theory has been refuted :-)

The thing to note is that there is no way someone's experience a few hundred years ago is passed along genetically if that's what you were after. This is not the way evolution works. However it could be passed along as "knowledge" by word of mouth, writings, etc., but it would be exceedingly rare to pass along such knowledge from the 1700s to the offspring living today without injecting other external influence. The only way this might work is in an extremely structured inheritance spanning many generations, a family business spanning hundreds of years, a church/religion, a cult, a closed and isolated society worshipping plants, etc. Again, extremely unlikely given today's prevalence of information everywhere.

In other words, someone who becomes a palm fanatic today is influenced by friends/associates living today and the information available on the internet rather than having anything to do with someone's family history, and it has absolutely nothing to do with genetics alone.

Edited June 6, 2016 by Pando

[Howeadypsis]

Not sure how this works for me. I live in England and have never been abroad! And the first plants I got into as a kid were succulents. (Be cool if there was a succulent palm!)

[Brad Mondel]

We all did evolve out of Africa...perhaps inner instinct attracts us to tropical looking plants. Nature is astounding.