"Omigod! An alien birthing!", was what I thought upon seeing this when I stepped outside into the front garden one day. Beautiful, isn't it? I'm still geting used to the yearly cycle of activity of some of the larger trees out there, so this was a pleasant surprise. Having convinced myself that it was not going to grab me in its many-fingered purple paw and do something horrible to me, I studied it for a long while, and took a few photographs. Within a day or two, it revealed its full, elegant shape. Since then, I've had several appear. I love the colours. I don't know the name of this palm, unfortunately. Do you? It is very common around Southern California.
There are so many varieties here (all but one brought here in the last century or so, apparently), and gardeners love them: I've [strike]three[/strike] two (correction because the other is a variety of cycad...not a palm at all) different types in a quite small space. You can see typical streets in the city of LA with several varieties along the sides for many blocks, and several more types in the gardens of the houses on that street. My Sunset Western Gardens book gave me several names, but no pictures, and there just way too many to make a guess. Google turned up this wonderful online encylcopedia of palms, which is not organized in a way that allows for a timely identification, but does seem to have a wealth of valuable information in it. Look at the photo gallery to get an idea of just how many types there are worldwide. -cvj
