Well, I just got back from the talk by the palm Dr., Larry Noblick at Fairchild Tropical Gardens. It was my honor to meet, listen and share a few words with him. Although he's an expert who specializes in palms, he has many other degrees.
As I mentioned yesterday, the free talk was held at Fairchild. The talk had an enjoyable ambiance of which no one else can put together like Fairchild Tropical Gardens.
I was able to take some quick notes on my iPhone, whose battery was about all gone, but was very glad to be able to switch to low battery mode with no problems after that. So, thank you Apple.
I was lucky to get a hold of Dr. Noblick before he began the lecture, and I asked him to please also talk about edible fruit palms, considering his vast experience and travels in the tropical locations of the world. Although he told me that edible fruit palms were not his expertise, he is aware of edible fruit palms like the peach palm and a few others.
The guy is amazing, he learned how to go up just about any kind of palm tree with a contraption (called a jepa? or something like that) that consists of two metal chords, each with a piece of specially design wood for each foot, so that that when stepped on will support the weight of the climber as he goes of a palm tree. It's a very ingenious contraption. One piece would go around the palm tree and the ending part of it would kind of wrap around the lower portion of one leg, while the other piece would also wrap around the palm tree and the ending part would wrap around the waist. I found it truly amazing and I was like, I've 'gotta' get me one of those things. Dr. Noblick bought his contraption while in Brazil for $40.
The lecture was very interesting. He's been to just about every tropical location in the world where palms grow. He's discovered and named new palm species, and in the professional slide show were shown a myriad of all types of different types of palm species, exotic-beautiful palms, fat palms, thin palms, giant palms, super dwarf one foot tall palms... And, there were indeed some very interesting and exciting edible fruit palm species in the slide show.
Of the several edible fruit palms he mentioned during the speech, the one that garnered the most attention of everyone in the audience, including myself, was the double coconut seed palm, found in the Seychelle Islands. I garbled the scientific name when I wrote it down: Lidoices?-Maldivian. After the lecture, I spent some time talking with Dr. Noblick, and he told me that inside the gigantic double coconut seed is quite a good amount of edible food!
Finally, I couldn't help but to ask Dr. Noblick about his opinion on the new precise gene manipulation technology called CRISPR/CAS9, with regards to doing some fine tuning of palm genes like the coconut palm to improve the quality and productivity of coconut trees. Although he was not aware of this technology yet, I was not surprised after taking from the lecture that he's a very hands on, in the field, traveling scientist, and not locked up in a lab someplace. And, also because the CRISPR/CAS9 technology is still so brand new at just about 4 years old.