[HN Gopher] How do palm trees survive hurricanes? (2017)
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How do palm trees survive hurricanes? (2017)
Author : graderjs
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-08-09 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.indefenseofplants.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.indefenseofplants.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Survivor bias. The ones that don't survive a hurricane don't grow
| up.
| whyenot wrote:
| ...and don't reproduce, and don't pass on their genes to future
| generations. Natural selection.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Another phrase for 'survivor bias' is evolution under natural
| selection.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| Yeah he's not really using the term "survivor bias" in the
| way that statisticians do.
| smm11 wrote:
| I've got a palm on the border with my neighbor, and it's a tank.
|
| And you might think dealing with tire-like leaves is a hassle,
| until you've lived somewhere surrounded by Oak trees and a
| neighborhood association that demands raking.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Because they bend. During a storm they'll just go with the wind.
| One of the sickest, saddest sounds during a storm is when a pine
| or oak snaps. Oaks especially will creak and moan during a storm.
| Right before the wet snap of it breaking it will sometimes
| moan/creak loud as if it knows it's fate.
| sophacles wrote:
| I lived in a pretty old neighborhood for a while. The type of
| neighborhood where the trees on the treebanks are over 100
| years old, and have grown to be a full canopy over the road.
| The branches of these trees are big enough to be trunks
| themselves.
|
| One day I was sitting out on the porch enjoying a nice evening
| and I heard what I thought was a bunch of kids "squealing" and
| then jumping into the pool. The only similar sound I'd ever
| heard was at the end of "adult swim" breaks at the public pools
| growing up. Turns out it was one of the giant trees dropping a
| limb onto the road several blocks away - fortunately no one was
| hurt but some parked cars were totaled.
|
| It's very much one of those sounds you have to experience to
| really grasp.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Surprisingly loud.
|
| A tree next to my house snapped in half during some freak 90mph
| (145km/h) gusts and it sounded like a small explosion, though
| not as fast since it didn't all happen at once. But I really
| though something had exploded until I noticed the tree out the
| window was no longer quite as tall as it used to be. It was a
| large, live tree too, but can't remember what kind it was. It
| was on a lot next to my house that was undeveloped for _at
| least_ 100 years, and farmland some time before that.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Was paddling down a river the other day and a giant oak fell.
| Sounded like gunshots at first, then maybe fireworks, and by
| that time I noticed what looked like a T-Rex moving around
| among the trees, the tree finally came down on another tree
| and fell into the water.
| green-salt wrote:
| I heard this after a ice storm then high winds. Creepy sound
| when it creaks all the way into the crack sound.
| Exness199507 wrote:
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Monocots are pretty cool. Growing up in the Midwest, I was
| surrounded by corn, another monocot which is really just a tall
| grass. I used to imagine that a giant walking through a
| cornfield, tassels tickling his toes, wouldn't be all that
| different from me walking around the back yard on grass that had
| gone to seed.
| graderjs wrote:
| That's a cool imagining :) Nice image :)
| bush-bby wrote:
| When I was in elementary school in South Carolina, they would
| teach us about fort Sumter and the beginning of the civil war.
| They explained that the fort was built using palmettos because
| when shot with a cannonball they would simply absorb the ball and
| bounce it right back off.
| js2 wrote:
| A palm tree, speared by a piece of lumber during Hurricane
| Andrew:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/3f77mEa
|
| I was in Miami for Andrew. My dad owned a one-hour photo lab.
| After the storm, there were tons of insurance adjusters needing
| their photos developed. My dad and I got his lab open the day
| after Andrew and ran it on a portable generator for two weeks
| till the power came back. This was one of the photos we printed
| during that period. Fun times.
|
| The palm trees did fine. Miami also has ficus trees planted all
| over the place. Huge canopies. Huge root structures, but the
| roots are very broad and shallow. In my neighborhood, every ficus
| tree was toppled with its roots pulling up sidewalks and grass.
| This is not from Andrew, but it looks like this:
|
| https://cf-images.us-east-1.prod.boltdns.net/v1/static/56181...
|
| It's hard to convey the destructiveness of Andrew to folks who
| weren't there, but this gives some idea:
|
| https://historycollection.com/31-images-hurricane-andrew-des...
|
| Apparently that tree is a celebrity. I didn't realize there were
| a bunch of picture of it on the Internet till now:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hurricane+andrew+palm+tree&ia=imag...
| hansthehorse wrote:
| My sister lived across from the zoo and evacuated for Andrew. I
| went with her back the house after the storm and the
| neighborhood looked like a disorganized lumber yard. Nothing
| was standing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >It's hard to convey the destructiveness of Andrew to folks who
| weren't there
|
| I grew up with tornados, and know first hand their destructive
| potential. However, hurricanes scare the shit out of me as not
| only do you get the destructive winds, it's the flooding on top
| of that pain that's just truly devastating.
| spc476 wrote:
| Hurricanes I can deal with (I live in South Florida). You get
| days of notice so you can prepare the property (and/or get
| out of the area). Tornados scare me more---they can just pop
| up and if you are lucky, you may get a few minutes warning.
|
| Perhaps it's just what you get used to growing up (never
| experienced an earthquake, and they scare me more than
| tornados).
| importantbrian wrote:
| I have lived in places where I've had to deal with both and
| it's the long notice involved with hurricanes that make
| them worse to me. Tornados are over and done with. There's
| no prep and the area they cover is small so you're unlikely
| to be directly effected by them. But with hurricanes
| there's so much prep to do, shortages to deal with, etc.
| and even if you don't take a direct hit there's often a ton
| of clean up and dealing with long power outages, etc.
|
| Tornados are in and out of your life in a blink. Hurricanes
| you have to live with for weeks or months it feels like.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love reading someone else's "comfort" with a tornado as
| meh that I have. However, we do know a lot about them,
| and can hear a warning, check out the location and then
| decide if we need to go hide or not. Simple info like if
| the danger zone is east of you, you're okay. If the
| danger zone is southwest-ish of you, then start paying
| closer attention. The fact that they can zoom in to the
| doppler images and see the circulation, provide the
| warning up to 15 mins in advance, see the debris to
| determine if it is on the ground or not, etc is
| absolutely fascinating and life saving abilities. Plus,
| they can extrapolate the path and tell people by street
| intersection that you're directly in the path. Hurricane
| predictions are like "well, we've told you for 3+ days to
| get the hell outta here in a wide swath of predicitions,
| but you didn't so...good luck!" There's no it's already
| passed us, so now we just hope to avoid the hail.
| Hurricanes pass, then you have the potential of bonus
| tornados, storm surge, and oh, the storm may just park
| directly on top of you and drop 40" of rain over the next
| couple of days.
|
| Yeah, I'll take a good ol' spring thunderstorm any day.
| User23 wrote:
| The surprise aspect of tornadoes can be dangerous too,
| especially at night. At least hurricanes are relatively
| predictable.
| importantbrian wrote:
| I grew up in a place with tornados and now live in a place
| with hurricanes. I'll take tornados over hurricanes any day.
| Not because of any difference in destruction, but because of
| the massive difference in inconvenience. With tornados, you
| know there is a system moving through a day or two before.
| There's no real prep to do. Once the storm gets to you you
| hunker down for a few hours and assuming you don't get hit
| you're done.
|
| Hurricanes, especially the cape Verde ones, occupy you for
| what feels like weeks. Irma became a hurricane on August
| 31st. It didn't hit Florida until September 10th. And it felt
| even longer than that. You have to start getting food and
| water and fuel ready. You have to board up your house and
| help your friends and family put up their shutters. Everyone
| else is doing the same thing at the same time as you so there
| are shortages. You leave work in the middle of the day
| because your co-worker said they found bottled water at
| Publix. After work, you sit in a line of cars down the block
| to get gas. You have to make a decision about staying or
| going. Then after the storm, even if you didn't get a direct
| hit from the core of the storm, there is tons of cleanup. You
| often are without power for a long time. My friends who are
| from here speak nostalgically about hurricane parties. I
| think they're crazy.
| stemlord wrote:
| I absolutely hated hurricanes growing up as a child (aside
| from getting to miss school) but I once got to experience
| the eye and it was incredible. The calmness feels extra
| calm after days of storm.
| echoradio wrote:
| > Miami also has ficus trees planted all over the place.
|
| Fun story. In 2005, South Florida took two direct hits: Katrina
| in late August, Wilma in October.
|
| During Katrina, a neighbor's massive ficus tree was toppled.
| They were in the process of removing it and had only taken care
| of the top when Wilma's impending arrival halted work. Wilma
| put the tree upright.
|
| Thankfully those storms were nuisances compared to Andrew. I
| was north of where the eyewall hit, but seeing the aftermath
| has stuck with me for life. It is hard to believe it has been
| 30 years.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Amen to deep roots.
|
| I had to remove a tiny 5 inch diameter palm tree from my back
| yard and it took me about 2 hours of heavy pickaxing and the
| shoveling. And ultimately, I had to tie a rope on the tall end,
| and have my wife lever it from the root with the pickaxe.
| Extremely hard to remove these bastards.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| They have to be strong because they're beautiful and people
| want to uproot them.
|
| You know people want to exploit these trees? In Chile you have
| Chilean wine palms, men topple the tree and tap the root, get
| the sap and sell it, it's like honey people put them on
| bananas, it's a Chilean dish, using the sap, called miel de
| palma. The wine of the wine palm. So they have to be strong.
| These trees survived the 9.6 degree earthquake in 1960, and the
| 8.8 degree earthquake in 2010. Moreso than hurricanes,
| different palms, not as tall and skinny, though that kind, the
| matchstick palms like in Los Angeles, they are present here
| too, like in front of Universidad Catolica campus near Metro
| Universidad Catolica (that's the name of the station,
| Universidad Catolica on Linea 1, Line 1).
|
| They're all beautiful. Those trees are currently surviving
| urban warfare at that intersection, every Friday evening it's a
| collective struggle on both the police and protester's sides.
| So they have to be strong.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| As someone who recently moved to a part of the US with native
| palms, a few discoveries that surprised me...
|
| 1) Large palms are _tough_. As in, serious-work-to-pole-saw-
| through tough. They may looks wispy in the wind, but all of those
| components (leaves, fruit pods, fruit stalks, leaf shealths) are
| beyond the strength of an average human to simply pull (tension)
| apart.
|
| 2) Once dried, palm parts are effectively made out of steel.
|
| 3) Palms produce a _lot_ of debris. All summer long.
|
| 4) Fully developed Queen palm seed stalks are _heavy_. Maybe 50
| lbs?
|
| 5) The Sears Tower is actually a 3x3 grid of individual towers,
| connected in a way that allows for lateral motion. This mimics a
| palm's trunk structure.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower#Planning_and_co...
| TobTobXX wrote:
| To save you the lookup: 50 lbs = ~22.5 kg
| doubled112 wrote:
| Is it just Canadians near the U.S. border that constantly
| convert temperatures and weights on the fly?
|
| I see replies and bots all over the Internet for this, but I
| usually have it roughed out already.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Chilean-American here, absolutely. All the time. I still
| can barely do fahrenheit, and I've come to prefer the
| American system of feet and inches for human height.
| tspike wrote:
| A simple way to think of Fahrenheit is: 0 degrees is just
| about the coldest a person can stand, and 100 is the
| hottest.
| elboru wrote:
| Mexican near the border here, same.
| SanderNL wrote:
| How much is this in micro-Firkins?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| obviously Firkins / 1,000,000. Unless Firkins aren't in
| sane decimal universe for grownups but one of those feet-
| to-inches (or miles-to-yard, or feet to X) magical constant
| ones
| dylan604 wrote:
| everyone knows Firkins are measured in 7-bits. The thing
| I never can remember is if it is Big-Endian or Little-
| Endian. things are either quite big or quite small if you
| get the wrong endianess
| post_break wrote:
| 2. dried fallen palm leaves are extremely dangerous, they are
| sharp as a knife. I was getting rid of some and it just touched
| my arm, I now have a 4" scar where it looks like I was trying
| to self harm.
|
| 3. I don't think so, my bamboo or cotton wood trees make so
| much more debris. At least with palms they are large debris and
| can easily be tossed.
|
| One thing people don't realize is how much of a pain it is to
| cut leaves down. I have a chainsaw on a stick that works
| wonders vs those terrible curved saw things.
| dhosek wrote:
| I had a Chinese Elm tree on my property back in the 90s.
| Dropped little leaves 365 days a year that got _everywhere_.
| I also had a palm tree. The big leaves that fell on occasion
| were easy to deal with.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| 4. Dried leaves are highly flammable.
|
| Had to clear a big pile of dried mixed palm and cordyline
| leaves, and decided to burn them. Big mistake. They're full
| of oils. Be very careful with that. Annoyingly for the same
| reason they don't really rot, so getting rid of them can be a
| pain.
| tomrod wrote:
| Use them as roofing on a pergola? Mimic what lots of
| equatorial cultures do.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Have a couple of palms near the back yard fence and yeah would
| not want that debris to hit me on the head. From 10m high could
| be a KO!
| forinti wrote:
| I don't get it why cities plant palms along streets: they
| offer little or no shade and they drop enormous leaves that
| can hurt people or damage cars.
| irrational wrote:
| I grew up in south Florida where all the streets were lined
| with palm trees. I never heard of a person or car being
| hurt/damaged by falling palm leaves. It has probably
| happened, but must be exceedingly rare. Then again, I never
| saw downed leaves along the roads or any city trucks doing
| pick up, so now I wonder how and when they were picked up.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Any time I visit areas with palm trees there seems to be
| a small army of gardeners that maintain all but the
| "wild" palm trees. Also pretty sure there is a cottage
| industry of people who harvest the coconuts.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've seen a few fronds down in Southern California (also
| many palm trees there) - city maintenance picks them up I
| presume, and if the trees are "maintained" they don't
| actually drop many (because they get cut before they can
| fall).
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > The Sears Tower is actually a 3x3 grid of individual towers,
| connected in a way that allows for lateral motion. This mimics
| a palm's trunk structure.
|
| If you are easily frightened, do not go up to the top on a
| windy day. It sways in the wind like a palm tree (side-to-side
| 10-15 feet, 3-4 meters). And the creaking noises! If you close
| your eyes, it is easy to imagine that you are in a tall ship
| 150 years ago.
| DelaneyM wrote:
| We have a dense line of palm trees protecting our shoreline on
| our property (South Caribbean), and ours is the only house on a
| long coast which hasn't lost metres of land to oceans over the
| past decade. (Our neighbours have prioritised private beaches, I
| like my farmland.) It's easily visible on Google Maps satellite
| view, but I'm not sure I want to post a link to my house...
|
| Because they're all that's holding the property together their
| root systems are exposed on the seaward side, and they are
| _massive_. I couldn't build a stronger retaining wall. I wish
| this article shared some pictures of a palm root system, it's
| really the most impressive part. Together with seagrape shrubs I
| think I'm actually reclaiming a few inches a year. I also have
| some great footage of palm trees bent over nearly 90deg in a
| cat-3 from a few years back.
|
| One thing not mentioned here is the risk under storms of
| coconuts. In a tropical storm, palm trees become coconut
| catapults when the trunks whip around at high speed and under
| tension. We've lost multiple 1"-thick concrete roof tiles to
| coconut strikes, as well smashing (but not breaching) a cat-3
| hurricane door.
|
| Here for the Caribbean content!
| dopamean wrote:
| How is your land going to hold up as the neighbors' is eaten
| away?
| DelaneyM wrote:
| We're not going to lose our land from the edges, if that's
| what you're asking. It's actually causing a bit of an issue
| right now because our land has been retained while the beach
| has disappeared, so it's no longer possible to walk the beach
| except at lowest tide. slOne of my neighbors has requested
| (with a legal letter) that we remove our trees and landscape
| in a continuous beach.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| How maddeningly shortsighted!
| thorncorona wrote:
| How does that work when they send a letter telling you how
| to landscape your land?
| DelaneyM wrote:
| In this case I laugh to myself and ask my lawyers to
| reply.
|
| It's a bit more nuanced than I make it sound
| (https://www.ogierproperty.ky/publications/public-access-
| righ...), but it's hard to make the argument that I've
| intentionally extended my property to block the beach
| when the original property lines are maintained and the
| trees doing the work are 20 years old.
|
| Due to erosion of artificial beaches and our access laws,
| my neighbors are actually losing a few feet of private
| land every year. I'm just kicking back and literally
| yelling at them to get off my backyard lawn.
|
| I can't wait for their reaction when I get my chicken
| coop...
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > I can't wait for their reaction when I get my chicken
| coop...
|
| Those are my goals too :)
|
| Hope yours goes well. I'm trying to buy land for privacy
| trees and small farm. Hopefully, one day..
| bombcar wrote:
| They're basically the trees from Seuss's _The King 's Stilts_.
| markdown wrote:
| Eventually even coconut trees don't help. I, along with
| extended family, own a large coconut plantation in Fiji with
| over 1km of beachfront. Wave erosion has been so bad that in
| some places it's gone past the first row of trees so that
| they're detached from the beach and stand alone out at sea at
| high tide.
| DelaneyM wrote:
| Absolutely true. We have a reef about 200m offshore that's
| doing the heavy lifting blocking waves for us, though it's at
| risk to reef death (SCTLD - Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease).
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(page generated 2022-08-09 23:01 UTC)