Mysterious Self-Destructing Palm Tree

Thursday, 17th January 2008 by

Scientists working with Kew gardens have today announced their discovery of a massive "self-destructing palm tree" in Madagascar. The tree has a bizarre unusual reproductive cycle, whereby after around 50 years of growth, the process of flowering actually kills the tree!

the colourful display and the production of fruit is so taxing that the nutrient reserves of the palm run dry as soon as it fruits and the entire tree collapses and dies.

The story has been reproduced in numerous articles today, all of which mentioned this little morsel from the original press release:

The plant is so massive, it can even be seen on Google Earth.

And yet not ONE of the many, many, many, many, many reporters managed to include a link to the location of the tree, or even the co-ordinates! And the reason of course, is that none of them actually bothered to check whether you really can see this tree or not.

Fortunately the team at Google Sightseeing don't subscribe to such lazy reporting methods, and we can EXCLUSIVELY REVEAL the location of the Mysterious Self-Destructing Palm Tree!

Um, hang on, that's just a forest. Apparently it's the one in the middle, let's zoom in a bit...

Right... If only it looked a little more interesting, eh? πŸ˜‰

Thanks to Bronwyn at Kew gardens and readers Michael Chung and Marc Wintle.