This is a neat story I can only imagine those who have lived there their entire lives and had no idea that this would one day happen. What a amazing treat for them.
I have recently became interested in palm trees. I know a person who immigrated from Slovakia to here in Western Canada many years ago. In her front yard stands a beautiful palm tree probably around 18 or so feet tall. Seeing how we get snow here every year and always associated palm trees with warmer climates I didn’t think they could actually do so well. The couple I came across in the past were very small and the owner stated that he needs to cover them every winter to keep them safe. According to this lady with the big palm she never did that. She said her family member brought seeds from Slovakia years ago and they just started them inside and planted it outside when small and it survived the cold months no protection.
Now I eagerly want to try grow a palm tree myself. Her tree has a few big bunches of seeds hanging on but I have no clue when they are due to fall. And due to this ladies age she forgets exactly when the seeds drop also but that they turn a kind of orangish color first. So I keep watch hoping I will catch some once they fall. It is just a neat looking tree and hers seems to be very hardy I hope I can continue the life of this tree and the memory of this lady by planting my own.
One thing that always struck me in park were the sheer diversity of palms. There are really beautiful shapes and sizes. That whole stretch along the beach and highway is just incredible with the forethought of designing and planting such wonderful species of plants, beyond the trees mentioned in the article.
Also as an anecdote my favorite thing in the Flamengo beach park is an abandoned marionette theater filled with stray cats. The cats were very friendly and the community would come and take care of them. I would go as often as I could and often thought of one as my own.
Copacabana is way more famous, but Flamengo in my opinion is probably the top beach in Rio.
[1] - https://www.mountainproject.com/area/202035833/grumari
Also I find it a huge plus when beaches have no electricity nearby nor buildings as a backdrop. (Florianópolis gets a massive thumbs up for these)
you gotta go to Brasilia and check Niemeyer's huuuuge empty concrete/grass spaces on a city that almost reaches 40°C on summer and it's basically warm all year. trimming and taking care of these trees must be a joy
“Tree rigging” is the term to search for. It’s generally less annoying to remove a century plant than a tree because there isn’t a huge stump or root system to deal with, and once they die they start to dehydrate and lose weight rapidly. The trick is to do it before they start falling over.
Edit: for those of you unfamiliar with the term, an annual only blooms once a year before dying. This is opposed to a perennial.
In contrast, perrenial crops are those you can harvest every year without having to plant new ones. For example, strawberries don't die after bearing fruit, you can collect fruit over and over from the same plant.
Plants are beautiful systems, and for those of us who pay attention there are is lots of beauty in the way they work.
There's also the spectacle of seeing so many once in 40-80 years blooms happen at once - which the article doesn't touch on, but is an awe-inspiring look into how regular biology can be, despite us thinking of it as messy and random. You'd tend to think that over such a long timespan, the trees would get "de-synchronized". Of course, that wouldn't make sense evolutionarily - they almost certainly need to all bloom at once to have a good chance of reproduction. But getting a biological process to happen 80 years from now on the same day/week for dozens(?) of trees across a park is a marvel in itself.
For plants like bamboos, they're interesting because the periods can be quite long, over a hundred years in some cases, so it's simply rare to see them in flower, and due to how they're propagated and how they keep time, you sometimes see a mass worldwide flowering and die off followed by a shortage of that plant.
It's a much rarer reproductive strategy than annual, biennial, or perennial.
https://en.jardineriaon.com/The-talipot-palm-trees-of-Rio-de...
ares623•1mo ago
leeoniya•1mo ago
anyhoos: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tguSVmcMux8
aspenmayer•1mo ago
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/actualidad-blog
IA has a capture of the site[0]; the first and only photo in the archived version of TFA appears to be a cropped version of one sourced to AP ([1] photo 2 in the carousel), and it is entirely uncredited in TFA.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20251214073005/https://en.jardin...
[1] https://apnews.com/article/brazil-rio-talipot-palm-flamengo-...
Other reporting I dug up reference the AP and also Reuters as sources for the story.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/once-in-a-lifet...
imajoredinecon•1mo ago
tomhow•1mo ago
Overall I think it's an interesting enough topic to warrant HN front page placement, and this is the most extensive article about it. We'd be happy to switch to a different source if someone can recommend a better one.
hatthew•1mo ago
tomhow•1mo ago
aspenmayer•1mo ago
I don't mean to disparage the site by calling it blogspam, but I do take your point. Thanks for your efforts and for your gentle nudging; I will seek to be more expressive and less judgemental.
PeterHolzwarth•1mo ago
On the other hand, the random bold lines makes it seem AI generated. Dunno.
figbert•1mo ago