The palm tree that I had chosen was growing from
the sheer face of the far side and quite inaccessible. We worked
our way along the ridge in an effort to reach some others, and there
were many to choose from, but each required an individual expedition
of perhaps 20 minutes, and a slow climb up, over, or around the
huge limestone boulders. Not all these were secure, some moved,
some had eroded into huge stones balanced on others. A push would
have sent them crashing down.
Well, what of the trees themselves? It must be said
that they were quite stunning. They were all growing in the most
inaccessible locations. I assumed that all the reachable trees had
been cut down for some purpose, and this was confirmed later by
one of the guides.
Firstly, the striking thing about them was that
they had bare trunks, some up to 30 feet tall, and rather slender.
All the leaves were stiff and erect with only a few dead leaves
hanging below the horizontal. The old leaf bases did not adhere
and the trunks had faint rings where the leaves had dropped. Most
noticeable was the fact that the leaf splits were of a very regular
depth. The underside of the leaves was noticeably a grey-blue colour.
The atmosphere up here was very moist, with cloud regularly obscuring
the view - an incredible sight with mountain and Trachy's appearing
and disappearing in the mist. We made our way down from this terrible
crest to a relatively flat area where we had lunch. We then decided
to explore another crest - again heavy going - and as we reached
the palms saw - oh joy of joys - one of them was in full fruit,
with several hundred seeds, hanging in 5 bunches. These innfructescences
did not hang down in the manner of T. fortunei but projected out
at only slightly below the horizontal. Extraordinary!
It was growing, predictably, on the edge of a precipice
that I did not dare to look over. With some difficulty we collected
seeds, as well as samples of leaves, leaf bases, inflorescences
etc., and with these adding to our load, we began the return journey
which I had been dreading.
The Thailand Trachycarpus
