Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 342
Palm Trees
Hello Everyone
Have you ever watched a news items about hurricanes in the Caribbean and noticed how much the palm trees in the film bend and whip about in the wind?
This is because the palm trees you see in hurricane areas are very flexible.
They have grown to be this way because it helps them survive very high winds. Hurricane winds can be well over 100 miles an hour.
The deciduous trees that grow in Rocky Bay could just snap in winds that strong. They can bend a bit – but not enough.
The palm tree trunks are not the same as say, an oak, which has a stiff, woody trunk.
Palm trunks are very fibrous and this is what makes them bend more easily than our European trees like oak and beech and sycamore. They do not form annual tree rings inside their trunks.
The leaves – or fronds as they are called, are sometimes completely blown away in a strong wind and the trees look bald, but these fronds do grow back eventually and the tree will look normal again.
The very tall palm trees you see in the Caribbean are coconut palms.
They are very difficult to grow outside in Britain – but not impossible in a sheltered place. You can see them in sheltered valleys in Cornwall. They can survive a bit of snow, but lots of frosts really upset them.
Palm trees have been around for a long time. They date back at least 100 million years to the Jurassic Era. They are very hardy but cannot tolerate prolonged periods of wet and cold which causes them to rot. They are found all over the world in deserts and forests in tropical and sub-tropical areas.
Palms have been cultivated for human use for over 5,000 years. They provided shade and useful products of wax, wood, sap, resin, oil and fruit.
Palm trees produce fruit which can be coconuts or berry-like fruit – like for example dates.
Products from palms can have many uses – and are found in many man-made products including: polish and wax, rope and mats, furniture and building materials. Their leaves provide strong and flexible materials to weave into bags, hats and carpets.
The oils from their fruits can be used in beauty products too.
There are lots of different kinds of palm trees and they are all beautiful – over two and a half thousand species in fact. Their fronds are either fan-shaped or feather-shaped. Palms are evergreen trees.
The big, chunky ones you can see when you go on holiday to the Mediterranean are called date palms.
They are stockier than coconut palms. Their trunks look very spiky compared to those of coconut palms. These are formed when leaves from the bottom of the crown dry up and fall off, leaving the base of the stalk.
ln this way, the trunks of the trees do not get thicker in old age.
Coconut palms can grow to 3o metres in height, and produce crops for 80 years.
Other well-known palms include: the needle palm of America, the foxtail palm of Australia, the Bismarck palm of Madagascar, the rattan palm with the longest leaves in the world at up to 25m long and 3m wide and the majestic royal palm which reaches a very lofty height.
lf you want to grow palm trees in Britain, you will have to choose plants that can survive the low temperatures we might get in a severe winter. There are two that do quite well.
They are the chusan palm and the dwarf fan palm. You might try to grow a needle palm as well.
Cabbage trees which originate from New Zealand grow in Britain and they look very much like palm trees.
Give your plants well-drained soil to grow in and a sheltered, sunny position.
They do not need fertilizer put in the soil when they are planted and although they need water, they should not be over-watered.
lf you see the leaves going yellow, they are not happy!
Auntie Alice doesn’t have any palm trees in her garden because she says they wouldn’t fit, but Mrs Miggins is trying to grow a little one in her tiny, sheltered courtyard garden behind her cottage Captain Jack tells me. We will see if it does well there.
lf really bad weather is on its way she will wrap it up in horticultural fleece. This will be like having its own little duvet to sleep under! 
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And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: Bob, do you know where coconuts were first found?
Bob: Yes, in a tree!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Exotic island
Date palm
Coconut palm
King palm
Foxtail palm
Sago palm
Fan palm
Bismarck palm
Chusan palm
Dwarf fan palm
Cabbage trees
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
The children are on the verge of going back to school.
They do like school, but holidays are better they think.
Auntie Alice cheered them up by making them some banana pancakes.
These pancakes are ever so easy to make.
You just mush up two bananas and add two beaten eggs to them and then a big spoonful of sugar.
Mix everything up together in a bowl.
Put a spoonful of the mixture into a frying pan (with a little oil in it) over a medium heat.
You should get about three pancakes in a pan at the same time.
Turn them over after a couple of minutes and cook the other side.
What could be simpler?
You will need to multiply the ingredients if you have lots of people to cook them for!
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Quick Quiz
What are these berries?
- c _ _ n
- l _ _ _ n
- r _ _ p
- b _ _ e
- b _ _ _ k
- c _ _ _ e
- b _ l
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A LlTTLE KNlTTED DOG
This dog is called Patch.
DOG BODY (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 20 stitches
Knit 24 rows of stocking stitch
Don’t cast off
Cut off the yarn leaving a length of about 20cm and thread this through the stitches on your needle and pull the knitting needle away
DOG LEGS (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 10 stitches
Knit 12 rows of stocking stitch
Don’t cast off
Cut off the yarn leaving a length of about 10cm and thread this through the stitches on your needle and pull the knitting needle away
DOG ARMS (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 8 stitches
Knit 8 rows of stocking stitch
Don’t cast off
Cut off the yarn leaving a length of about 10cm and thread this through the stitches on your needle and pull the knitting needle away
DOG EARS (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and brown dk yarn cast on 5 stitches
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Decrease 1 stitch at the beginning of the next 4 rows of garter stitch (1st)
Cast off
DOG SNOUT (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 10 stitches
Cast off
Wind the knitting into a spiral and sew across a few times with the white yarn to make into a solid disc
TO MAKE UP
- Sew up the back seam of the body and head right sides together using over-sew stitching
- Turn the body and head the right way out
- Sew along the inner leg seams using over-sew stitching right sides together and turn the legs the right way out
- Tightly bind the ankles twice around with white yarn
- Stuff the legs
- Sew across the top of the legs and the bottom of the body from behind (lay the legs across the stomach as you work) to attach the legs
- Stuff the head and body and pull the top of the head shut – secure the yarn
- Sew a strand of white yarn into the back of the neck and wrap it around the neck a couple of times, pull tight and secure the yarn into the centre back of the neck once more
- Sew the snout to the front of the face
- Embroider a face onto the front of the head using one strand of black yarn (you can pull double knitting yarn apart to get thinner strands) the eyes are French knots made with the yarn wrapped around the needle twice, the nose is a triangle with the point at the bottom with the inside filled with three vertical stitches
- Sew a brown patch over one eye using lazy-daisy stitch
- Sew along the under arm seams using over-sew stitching right sides together and turn the arms the right way out
- Tightly bind the wrists twice around with white yarn
- Stuff the arms with the ends of the yarn left over from the knitting and a little stuffing as well
- Sew the arms securely to the sides of the body so that they point forward
- Attach the ears to the top of the head
- Crochet 17 chains into a length of coloured yarn, tie the ends of the chain together at the back of the dog’s neck to make a collar and neaten ends
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- cranberry
- loganberry
- raspberry
- blueberry
- blackberry
- chokeberry
- bilberry
Cranberries
