What is that can be made into “millionaire’s salad” at one end, and into toothbrushes at the other? While you are pondering that question, let us add that almost everything in between the ends is also useful to man.
What is it? It is the palm tree – or rather the family of palm trees, for there are hundreds of varieties.
One of the good things to eat which some palms furnish is the growing green bud at the top of the tree. It is sometimes called “millionaire’s salad,” because the tree dies when this tip is removed. Presumably only millionaires can afford such waste for the sake of a delicacy for the palate.
Various palm trees also furnish dates, coconuts, sago, oil and the betel nuts that are chewed by millions as a stimulant. The leaves of palm trees are widely used in the tropics for thatching roofs, as well as being woven into panels for walls and sun shades. Another palm, the rattan palm, provides much of the furniture. And the husks of some palm seeds are hard enough to use as gravel for roads – or, in the case of the ivory palm – to make beautiful buttons.
And the toothbrush? For ages, some peoples have used pieces of palm tree root to clean their teeth. Altogether, the palm is so useful that it has been dubbed “the prince of the plant kingdom.”
The palm tree’s manner of growth is unique among trees. In fact, it grows a lot more like a stalk of corn than like usual trees. A corn stalk has a pithy center. So do palms, particularly the sago palm, which stores edible starch in its pith. A corn stalk does most of its growing in a thickish outer layer, and so does the palm.
“Normal” trees grow outward throughout their life, thanks to a living sheath of cells – called the cambium layer – which continually adds woody tissue on the inside and bark on the outside. But palm trees have no cambium layer, and for this reason generally cannot grow bigger around. The few varieties which do swell outward above ground do so from pressure generated by cell growth in the interior of the trunk.
One striking result of this growth habit is the palm tree’s ability to survive fires which decimate trees all around them. Since the palm’s life is centered inwardly rather than outwardly, it can often survive, even with a badly burned exterior.
Palms also have tremendous resiliency, thanks to the tough fibers which are packed densely in the outer layers of their stems. This enables them to bend and rebound in high winds which shatter other trees.
How did such a different kind of tree happen? Not by evolution! According to evolutionists, evolution mercilessly weeds out both plants and animals which seem to go counter to main-stream development. The Theory of Evolution is success-oriented. The winners become ever more successful, and crowd out the losers. There really isn’t much place for great variety in a world formed by evolution. And that would be particularly true in the tropics, where the competition for growing space is fierce. Yet it is chiefly in the tropics that this very different family of trees thrives!
There is another, more reasonable answer to the question of how all things came to be, and that is the Bible answer. The Bible says, “God said, “Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the earth;” and it was so. The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:11-12)
Palm trees are good. We have palm trees to be a blessing to us as a gift from a great and good Father-God – a God who created the earth as a glorious garden, and placed man in it as the pinnacle of His creation. This, the Bible tells us, is how it all began.
But the Bible also tells us of man’s great fall, and how in falling he spoiled the garden. Death and destruction thus entered into the very warp and woof of nature. The Bible also tells us that nature will not always remain ruined. A day is coming when this will be reversed, and all things shall be again as they were in the beginning. At that day, the Bible says, the lamb shall lie down with the lion in perfect safety. There will be no more killing; no more desolation. All will be at peace.
No man knows when that great restoration will take place. But we do not have to wait for that, in order to find perfect peace with God in our hearts. There is a way now to be reconciled to our God and our Maker. That way is through God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” (John 14:6) It is our prayer that you, too, will find peace in Christ Jesus.
(All Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible translation.)