Week Two Entry

Monday 2/4
I have a Palm tree in my backyard. I've seen it a thousand times, yet I've never noticed something like this leaf-like, frond-thing coming out of the trunk. I am curious about what it will become. It could be a new branch, but it's too low on the tree to be a branch.
I grabbed this "thing" and it had definite volume. The leaf's material was soft, and it was covering some kind of seed or branch. It felt similar to a pea pod. To know what exactly what this leaf is I'll need to do some research on the internet. I also want to find out what kind of Palm tree this is.

Tuesday 2/5
Morning
I researched this Palm tree on the Internet and could not find any picture or name for this plant. I'm not sure that this is a Palm tree??
Night. I looked at a few more sites, and I think that this tree is definitely a Palm tree. There are so many species of this plant, though, so it's hard to tell which one it is. I'm going to talk to my dad to find out what species it belongs to. I did find some useful terms for describing the Palm family, however, that gave me a better understanding of this type of plant. The branches that spread out from the top like an umbrella are called the crown. The branches come out of a smooth part of the trunk, which is called the crownshaft. The woody part of the trunk below the crownshaft is simply called the trunk. There are three kinds of leaves--the palmate, the costapalmate, and the pinnate. The pinnate is the type of leaf that most people see on Palm trees. The flowers or blooms that come out of the trunk-crownshaft intersection are called the inflorescence. So, I've figured out that this pink leaf-type object is actually an inflorescence. This means "flower stalk." Eventually, it will bloom into a flower or fruit. Once this happens, I'll have a better idea what kind of Palm tree this is.
This information was taken from: The Palm Shop. 2007. http://www.thepalmshop.com/anat.html. >Accessed 2008, February 5.