State of Florida bans the coconut!

[TikiRick]

All,

Since the coconut is my ultimate favorite palm, I was pleasantly surprised to see hundreds of coconuts planted and staked in the median along Ft. Lauderdale's public beach road, A1A. It had been long overdue for a major replanting since numerous storms, car accidents, droughts, and general decline took the toll on the palms in the median. They are all of the same general height (about 8 foot of clear trunk), apparently healthy green malayans, spaced about 25' apart, and mulched in nicely.

What better palm to plant along the beach than a coconut?

The very next day after my walk, this article appeared in the morning newspaper for the greater Ft. Lauderdale area. Interesting....our government at its finest hour.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

Coconut liability!  I have heard it all now....  We can't live in a nerf world (although that does sound kind fun :laugh: Nerf cars would be fun right?! O that _ _ _ _  just cut me off, I'll teach them...  CRASH! BLAMMO! POW!!)  Judges need to grow some spine and stop allowing liability claims for this kind of garbage to be paid out...  

[sonoranfans]

(PiousPalms @ Oct. 06 2007,16:36)

QUOTE

Coconut liability!  I have heard it all now....  We can't live in a nerf world (although that does sound kind fun :laugh: Nerf cars would be fun right?! O that _ _ _ _  just cut me off, I'll teach them...  CRASH! BLAMMO! POW!!)  Judges need to grow some spine and stop allowing liability claims for this kind of garbage to be paid out...  

I do understand that, given the liability laws, it could be a problem and thats a shame.  When I was in Kauai I had the timing of being near a coconut tree when it shed a large frond, whack, and another one that dropped a coconut within 10 feet of me.  The falling frond kind of scared the crap out of me dropping from a 30' height.  Even with the restrictions, you can still grow them in your yard.  And as long as a trespasser doesnt get hit with a falling coconut, you wont be sued.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

Well at least you admit that the coconut shed its frond and the land owner didn't do it to you....  I think you may have just dismissed your own case!! Me personally, when there are 300-400 lbs of detachable heavy objects suspended in the air that may fall off at anytime, I dont stand underneath em!!  Besides, palm trees dont have jobs or money to pay for their ill intentioned actions!  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[Dave-Vero]

We've been discussing this at 2ndlight.com

The state department of environmental protection (which covers state parks and other natural resource issues) has pretty strong policies favoring native species.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

HHAHAHAH at the above mentioned forum, Central Floridave said  "condominiums aren't native to Florida shoreline. Lets bulldoze those concrete structures. "

Well played sir!

[sonoranfans]

(PiousPalms @ Oct. 06 2007,17:12)

QUOTE

Well at least you admit that the coconut shed its frond and the land owner didn't do it to you....  I think you may have just dismissed your own case!! Me personally, when there are 300-400 lbs of detachable heavy objects suspended in the air that may fall off at anytime, I dont stand underneath em!!  Besides, palm trees dont have jobs or money to pay for their ill intentioned actions!  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

It was actually in the yard of the rental house I was staying in.  I walked down to look at the ocean on the second day and kaboom!  For the rest of my time there I was looking for fronds that might look dead every time I saw a coconut at the beach.  Then a coconut fell off another one, I decided the backyard was hazardous.  I have a newfound respect for the hazards of cocos.

[TikiRick]

It does take some effort to keep the coconuts and dead fronds from falling onto tourists lying in the beach sand or falling onto oncoming traffic. Effort equates to money. Realistically, there are not many trees that can take the abuse, both from man and the environment, than the palm. They do get a bad rap because of the expense to upkeep them and the fact that they do not provide much shade.

However, when you have a beach front that is known for being tropical and is a national and international destination for that reason, wouldn't you want to play up to the fact that this is the very reason why tourists spend their money here?

Call me crazy, but coconuts BELONG along the beachfront.

[Gonzer]

Ever since Harry Nilsson died, things just ain't been right for 'ol Cocos.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

Now Rick, me calling you crazy and Cocos being planted along the beach are two entirely different subjects.. :laugh:  

[PalmGuyWC]

Now I've heard it all!! The state discouraging planting Coconuts? Excuse the pun, but it sounds nutty to me. Any fool knows it's not smart to hang out under a fully loaded Coconut. Royals and even Washingtonias can drop some pretty lethal weapons sometimes too. (I never walk down wind of my Washingtonias when the wind is blowing hard). I guess the Dept. of Enviromental Protection will discourage swimming on Florida's beautiful beaches "because there's sharks out there".

How do they know coconuts aren't native? Seems I read South Florida was under ocean about 10,000 years ago. (as it will be again) Didn't most of the "native" plants in S. Florida wash up on some beach from the Bahamas or else the seeds were deposited there by birds? How long must one live in Florida until they are deemed a "native." If that rule applied to humans, Florida would be vacent again. How generous of the DOEP to allow a choice of 4 palms.  I believe Royals are considered natives and there are sure a lot of those lineing Fla. streets, Biscane Bulevard in the heart of Miami for example. Even the Canadian "snow birds" that flood Hollywood in the winter time have brains enough not to lounge under a loaded Coconut....or park their Cadilacs under them. (I have Canadian friends).

My solution:  Deport all the attorneys back to New York, and then you Florida folks could line your streets with whatever you wanted to.

Dick

[Walter John]

What's a cabbage palm over in Hollywood ?

Here the "Australian cabbage palm" is Livistona australis, the "Weeping cabbage palm" is L.decora and the "Central cabbage palm" is L.mariae.

Palm cabbage I've tried, nice. I've just made myself hungry for some mini dim sims, wadda ya reckon.

Meanwhile on coconut palms:

I recall up in Cairns they planted malay dwarf coconuts along the airport road beach section. This would alleviate the risks of fruit and leaves falling from great heights.

Tell me Floridians, is lethal yellowing still lethal there ? If so, malay dwarfs are most susceptible as I understand.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

Sorry Wal, In Florida, "Cabbage Palm" is used as a slang term for Sabal palmetto, our state palm...  also happens to be my avatar!  

[Walter John]

(PiousPalms @ Oct. 06 2007,19:11)

QUOTE

Sorry Wal, Cabbage Palm is used as a slang term for Sabal palmetto in Florida, our state palm...  also happens to be my avatar!  

There's yet another reason for not using common names I suppose. One doesn't know what palm you're talking about.

For those that don't know, Palm cabbage is the terminal bud of a palm, palms grow foliage from one bud, the terminal bud, located at the top. If the terminal bud is damaged, the palm dies. Called cabbage because it's quite edible and well, you figure it out.

[PalmGuyWC]

Wal,

It was thought the the dwarf Malay was the least succeptable to lethal yellowing, but any of them can get it. Some seem more resistant than others. The so called "native" coconut to Florida was the Jamacan tall, a coconut that was durable, would grow in a vacent lot witout any attention. Unfortunately, the Jamacan tall was the most succeptable to LY.

The dwarf Malays were much more resistant to LY and a breeding program was started in Florida and Jamaca where the Panama tall was crossed with the Malays, which produced a vigerous tall coconut that was more resistant to LY. They were called May-Pams.

I've lost touch with what's going on down there now, but I know for a while hybrid coconuts were being shipped to Florida from Jamaca by the thousands.

It was discovered that the vector for LY was a leaf hopper whose favorite home is St. Augustine grass. Guess what the favorite grass in Florida is?

Dick

[Tyrone]

Well, I see it this way. If you truly believe in evolution it's a survival of the fittest thing. If a person is standing under a coconut and it throws a leaf or a nut at someone and kills that person, the coconut has won. So maybe coconuts are angry at humans and are trying to wipe humans off the face of the Earth. Good on em I say. There just screaming out for help. That's all. But are YOU listening?........

[Dave-Vero]

Recent thinking is that nearly all coconuts are susceptible to lethal yellowing.  The best bet seems to be Fiji Dwarf, which isn't commercially available in Florida.  A botanical institution in Miami has some trees, however.  

Sabal palmetto isn't everyone's favorite palm, but the effect of masses of them lining a drainage ditch or stream can be impressive.  The local Wal*Mart is, surprisingly, good at not pruning the living daylights out of its screen of sabals, so the place is scarcely visible from the road.  Hardly anything else could do the job so well.

[DoomsDave]

(Dave-Vero @ Oct. 06 2007,20:30)

QUOTE

Recent thinking is that nearly all coconuts are susceptible to lethal yellowing.  The best bet seems to be Fiji Dwarf, which isn't commercially available in Florida.  A botanical institution in Miami has some trees, however.  

Sabal palmetto isn't everyone's favorite palm, but the effect of masses of them lining a drainage ditch or stream can be impressive.  The local Wal*Mart is, surprisingly, good at not pruning the living daylights out of its screen of sabals, so the place is scarcely visible from the road.  Hardly anything else could do the job so well.

Walmarts aren't native to Florida, either!

Let's bulldoze them as well . . . .

[DoomsDave]

Seriously, this begs some interesting questions.  

The possibility of injury is obvious.  There is a difference of opinion about the severity of injury, but I wouldn't want either a nut or a frond falling on me.

So, how many injuries are there from coconuts each year in Florida?

I couldn't find out, though a newspaper ran an article in 2002 which quote Dr. Peter Barss of McGill University in Ontario, Canada, who was supposed to have said that something like 150 people worldwide die from coconut-related injuries each year, which is more than the number of people killed by sharks.

He won an Ig Nobel award for his trouble.  

Except Dr. Barss didn't say that 150 people die each year.  He only noted 9 people getting conked in New GUinea, none fatally, though some were rendered comatose.  Which might be worse, from an insurance co's standpoint.

dave

[sonoranfans]

(Dave from So-Cal @ Oct. 06 2007,21:44)

QUOTE

Seriously, this begs some interesting questions.  

The possibility of injury is obvious.  There is a difference of opinion about the severity of injury, but I wouldn't want either a nut or a frond falling on me.

So, how many injuries are there from coconuts each year in Florida?

I couldn't find out, though a newspaper ran an article in 2002 which quote Dr. Peter Barss of McGill University in Ontario, Canada, who was supposed to have said that something like 150 people worldwide die from coconut-related injuries each year, which is more than the number of people killed by sharks.

He won an Ig Nobel award for his trouble.  

Except Dr. Barss didn't say that 150 people die each year.  He only noted 9 people getting conked in New GUinea, none fatally, though some were rendered comatose.  Which might be worse, from an insurance co's standpoint.

dave

It does kinda make you wonder how many of the injuries occurred while some fool was trying to knock a coconut out of a tree.  At 30' up probably not many, I suppose.  They can get huge and are beautiful trees that belong in the beach areas, and inland in meadows.  It just wouldnt be the same without them.  Its a shame when the lawyers just strip some of the best parts of life away.  I sure hope hawaii doesnt do a florida.  Something tells me that without the NY lawyers it wont happen there.

[Kris]

Dear Friends,

i know we all love coconuts & royals..but in my best of my knowledge goes what the floridian goverment has said..its the truth and nothing but the truth of this palm.and i have worst of the worst experience with these palms.when it comes to

fronds & nuts causing damage.

we had to remove all our coconut trees & royals on this account.very dangerous tree for conguested city houses &

residencial appartments within cities.

So my vote is with the goverment on stopping the use of these in cramped up gardens within city limits.

Kris.

[TikiRick]

My vote goes to planting MORE coconuts, not less! What's one less tourist from Ohio or Michigan?

[amazondk]

I had some dwarf variety coconuts planted at the entry of my driveway at my house in Fort Lauderdale.  They eventually got pretty tall and since I was somewhat relaxed with upkeep of the trees the occaisionally shed big clumps of coconuts which came crashing quite violently to earth.  Fortunately they never hit anything.  They do give a great touch to South Florida though.  Maybe something like what has been developed in Belem, Para a large city at the mouth of the Amazon River.  In Belem many of the older streets of the city are lined with Mango trees planted in the 1800s.  These trees are monsters, many of them are over 100 feet tall.  The mangos frequently come crashing down denting cars and breaking car windows.  So someone has invented mango damage insurance.   When I was in Belem a while ago one of these bombs came crashing down next to me and it made an impressive impact.  The worst of all in our area are Brazil nut gourds.  They are like cannon balls that come crashing down from at times 150 feet above the forest floor.  They are not cut in pastures as the trees are protected.  I have heard stories of cattle being killed by falling gourds.  Fortunately they have not been used as street trees around here.

dk

[fastfeat]

I'd imagine this has as much to do with the plant Nazis pushing to use native plants in new plantings as it does with the liability of falling nuts and fronds. While encouraging use of native plants is admirable, I agree that this is a little heavy-handed. If this is indeed a State mandate, I'm curious why this isn't the policy on State highways--witness all the new plantings of coconuts along I-95 near Lantana Rd in Broward Co, amongst many other exotics elsewhere.

Curiously, I just completed a tree inventory for the City of Pompano Beach. The predominate species, including new plantings, on the mile-long City beach, is coconuts. This includes platings on dunes planted with native beach perennials and grasses where loggerhead turtle nests are present! Go figure...

[palmmermaid]

I think I remember reading that the city of Miami cut down the royals in the median of US 1 because of falling fronds.  And they are native!  Stupid, just stupid.  But when you live in a society where a stupid woman can get a multi-million dollar settlement for driving with a cup of hot coffee between her legs, I don't doubt the cities and state are leery of planting them. Again - stupid, stupid, stupid.  It boils down to bo one wanting to be responsible for their own actions.

Sorry, Dean.  This post will probably get deleted!

[Dave-Vero]

fastfeat,

The Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection (which runs the state parks, among many other programs) is much stricter about native species than the Dept. of Transportation.  The latter is environmentally competent, not to mention that federal highway funding provides salaries for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to review highway projects.  

The Turnpike authority cooperated with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden on a remarkable project in the Homestead area.  An exit with a looping off-ramp had been built without disturbing the ground very much inside that loop.  Fairchild blitzed the exotic species that had colonized the area and planted a few natives.  An amazingly large number of native plants proceeded to show up and the site is turning into a little pine rockland.  

Probably the most noxious restriction on landscaping is recently-enacted state legislation forbidding the installation of any landscaping on highway rights-of-way that obstructs the view of "outdoor advertising".  At least one city has been forced to rip out a substantial swath of trees.  

My own thinking is that exotic cultivated plants are OK (I have a palm collection after all), but that it's best for a landscape's structure (trees, hedges, etc) to be heavy on natives, which are inherently well-adapted to the climate and have the added benefit of attracting birds.  I've only walked by, but the South Miami house that serves as Tropical Audubon's headquarters is a Miami hammock, and reputedly a bird magnet.  Georgia Tasker's book "Enchanted Ground", published by Fairchild, advocates this sort of approach.

Yesterday, I visited a hammock yard with no grass (typical of its neighborhood at the beach).  The next door neighbors had cut the trees (too messy) and cut most of the leaves off their Sabal palmettos (gotta hurricane-prune them!).

[bubba]

Coconuts and Royals make South Florida.What we need to do is get rid of these bureaucratic, politically correct ass -jacks that threaten to now start getting their incompetent hands into our vegetation.Probably getting kick-backs from native palm grower's.AHHH.....

[alex_7b]

I'm surprised that they didn't mention LY in the article.

Stay clear of the Royals, if you don't want to die under a falling leaf boot.

[fastfeat]

Dave--

Thanks for clearing up the bureaucracy on this issue. Only been here two years--still learning who manages what...

Seems like every agency has its own level it "protects". Was in Miami Springs (Dade Co) for a year and a half, where live oaks, gumbo-limbo and royal poinciana (exotic) are protected via city ordinances. In Palm Beach Co (unincorporated), I can remove anything, natives included (I think...) without a permit.

More power to the people who preserve and encourage planting of native plants, for habitat and fauna conservation. I'd be happier if the responsibility for such preservation/restoration would be placed on the big boys who do the most damage.

[Dave-Vero]

My city has a very strict tree ordinance that prevents me from removing laurel oaks that (in my humble opinion) should be replaced.  The ordinance was strengthened when someone in a barrier island oak hammock neighborhood decided to remove a particularly large tree.   The neighbors got it stopped but only after a number of large branches had been removed.

A lot of people remove trees because they're "messy" or because they're afraid they'll fall in a windstorm.  

But overall, tree canopy is effective hurricane protection, unless you have a category 4 or 5 storm that tears up everything, anyway.

[redant]

THIS  is why coconut palms should continue to be planted at the beaches when possible (zone wise).

It cracks me up when I see photos like this linked to anywhere in FL.

[fastfeat]

(redant @ Oct. 09 2007,09:41)

QUOTE

THIS  is why coconut palms should continue to be planted at the beaches when possible (zone wise).

It cracks me up when I see photos like this linked to anywhere in FL.

Classic! I have a postcard somewhere that has a gal in a bikini in a hammock tied between two Cocos with the caption "Greetings From California"...

[Moose]

Oh, am I too late?

[Kris]

No you are not late at all.

I must learn how to use the search engine of this forum.

Since i find it difficult to search my old topics and threads.

[Sabal Steve]

Is this something that a disclaimer could not cover? Like a skatepark perhaps? Is there not an inherent risk of danger? Dave?