Passing by the palm

There is one area of my Ft. Pickens patrol that has always intrigued me and that is the where the Sabal Palm grows outside the old fort...about halfway between the southwest fort wall to the beach.

Everyone I've asked has said it's been there "forever", so the origin of this lone palm remains a mystery. Sabals (also called Cabbage Palms) don't produce 'coconuts', so it didn't start from a coconut that washed ashore one day. It stands tall and straight, so I doubt it escaped from a decades-old landscaping project on the mainland. Hmmmm...where did it come from?

Sabal Palms left on their own usually have a cross-hatch of old leaf stems going up the trunk, but considering the number of hurricanes this palm has gone through, it no surprise they have been torn away, leaving the trunk smooth.

If anyone has any speculation or old stories you've heard about it, feel free to weigh in. I love a good mystery story, but I'm that irritating person who has to check the last couple of pages to see how the story is going to end. In this case, I want to know the beginning!

Wild palm

This is one of the natural (wild) palms growing on Santa Rosa Island. It is a sabal palm, also known as a cabbage palm, located on the beach near Ft. Pickens, which you can see in the background.


The seeds of a sabal palm are small, so even though sabal palms are known to be fast-growing, we can only imagine how old the tree might be.


Silhouette of the same palm tree as I passed it on patrol one morning.