Palm Sunday

Again, with Damla Durgun:

newstalkzb.co.nz, Why are these dangerous trees allowed to exist in New Zealand?

Yesterday, my five-year-old niece had to have surgery. She was bumped up the priority list at Nelson Hospital by an orthopaedics team who were a bit concerned about her condition. Her ankle hurt, and her mum reckoned it was looking swollen and feeling a bit hot, the telltale signs of infection.
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And what was it, you’re wondering. Why did your sweet, cheeky, little 5-year-old niece have to go forego her breakfast and anything by mouth, and endure all the stress of being poked and prodded, the fear of being put to sleep, why did she have to be forcibly held down so the anaesthetist could get the mask on her face and the surgeons could cut open her little ankle and slice down into the flesh?

The reason is that as a result of an innocent accident when she was playing with her friends, she ended up with what the surgeon told her mum is the single most common foreign object their team gets called on to remove. No, it wasn’t Lego. It wasn’t a rusty nail or drawing pin gone bad. It was a spike from the frond of a Phoenix palm tree.

Now this is either yet another example of my ignorance, which I’ll concede is fairly likely, or maybe this comes as a surprise to you too. I had absolutely no idea that Phoenix palm trees posed such a serious risk.

They’re obviously an exotic. They’re originally from the Canary Islands of all places, but you see them all the time in coastal parts of New Zealand. They look tropical and quite attractive in the right setting, but their structure is downright sinister. At the end of their fronds are long, sharp spikes. The spikes are poisonous. They snap off under the skin. And that, as it turns out, is a very nasty combination.

As I've mentioned before, my parent's house in Los Angeles had several large palms, including two Canary Island Date Palms, and I can attest to the very pointy and annoying spike, which are actually at base, and not the tip of the fronds. Neither are they venomous (if you bite it and you die, it's poisonous; if it bites or sticks you and you die, it's venomous). We used to play with them as swords. I'm sure I was stuck more than 10 times (I can be a slow learner), and one never broke off, and I never got an infection. Actually, it's kind of a miracle I survived to adulthood, if that's what this is.