Fan Palm Forest

 

The walk down to the beach passes through the most beautiful forest I have ever seen; the dominant tree is the fan-palm. In Europe this is generally seen as a rather tattered looking shrub in South Devon gardens or as a single glass house specimen. Here, because of the particular nature of a jungle with its roots in poor nutrient sea sand they are the dominant tree. Not one but hundreds, from young sprouters in the jungle floor to massive trees forming the upper canopy, all spreading their enormous pleated-plate leaves, at every angle to catch the filtering sunlight.  It's a light hearted circus-act, trees that juggle with plates. It rained very hard as I walked through so I found a leaf overhanging the path, and even with the natural splits in the 4 foot wide umbrella, kept quite dry. It is surprizing how little water reaches it to the forest floor, in a shorter shower anyway.