Palms and lightning

[DUNDEE]

Lightning strike next to my house struck two coconut palms and arced across to several others as shown in the first pic... you can see where the arcing burnt the fronds of the surrounding palms.  An subsequent offering was made to the coconut God's to spare their lives, but alas they demanded their pound of wood.   

The sap inside had boiled and was oozing out all down the length of the trunks like taffy, and a rather rapid decline too place, with the crowns completely collapsing with in a fortnight.

Oddly enough though.. a small sickly Roystonea Oleracea situated between the two struck coconuts, suddenly had a massive growth spurt afterwards and is quite elongated now.  You can see how closely spaced the growth rings were before the lightning hit, and then compare that to the new growth ....... The lightning did something...nitrogen??? 

It's like something out of a Frankenstein movie ... Igor..!!!   increase the power !

[comic097]

Thats crazy justin, plenty of rain up you way recently Justin ?

[DUNDEE]

Oh yeah!!..... my dam is full to overflowing.  Nice and sunny today however, need the ground to firm up a bit so I can do some slashing, tractor just sinks into at the moment.

[Kim]

Interesting place you have there!

[RedRabbit]

There's certainly no shortage of lightning where I am, on two occasions last year I was close enough to actually hear the lightning (and I'm not talking about thunder)... It is too bad to see the coconuts get killed, perhaps every garden should have 1 Washingtonia as a lightning rod. lol

[tropicbreeze]

A few years back I lost 6 tall coconuts to a lightning strike. It also cooked a lot of smaller stuff close by. And it was strange how some of the coconut trunks had big tufts of fibre blown out of them while others just oozed a brown sap.  One of the coconuts had a big Philodendron up it and that was turned to jelly. The smell was around for quite a while afterwards and then when the fronds started falling it made a real mess.

[mcrawford]

The wife and I were sitting on the front patio watching our "monsoonal" rainstorm last August when a deafening crack

rang out and we saw a lightning bolt strike the neighbor's 20' high spiral stairs only a couple hundred yards away...

and 30' lower elevation.  Technically, that bolt should've hit our spiral stairs, as our place is higher up the mountain.

Despite the code required GFI's, he lost all  his electronic gizmos including computer and new flat screen TV.  The real

irony is he has a 40-50' Washingtonia in his yard!  We all wish it was that eyesore that was hit instead.  I like palms, but

somehow the tall Washintonia looks funny towering over all these saguaro cacti.