Today at the Design of Life blog: The exploding palm tree

Jane Harris has a new article at Design of Life blog about a newly discovered genus of palm in Madagascar (yes, that’s right, a GENUS):
“New findings in science: self-destructive palm puzzles botanists”

The tree waits about 100 years to flower and then explodes in tonnes of flowers and then just dies.

I’m glad local trees in the Toronto area are more measured in their response to sex. (They live man y decades but flower decorously every year, and never just explode in flowers and die.)Like, the palm tree's sort of behaviour would be okay for weeds, but …

And no one has any idea yet how it got itself to Madagascar.