Ladies and Gentlemen, readers of The Mercury, a word, if I may. Being Charlestonians, and thus on the vanguard of all trends for the state, it is our responsibility to lead the way for our fellow South Carolinians, and yet it appears that many of us are negligent in our duty, indeed, in a most embarrassing fashion.
In my travels around the United States and the world, courtesy of the Army, I can say with confidence that the only other Americans to show nearly as much pride in their land as we do are Texans. We both seem to carry our flags everywhere we go. While it’s a bit troubling to admit that we share some similarities with our wayward western citizens, what’s mortifying is that we oftentimes make inadvertent fools of ourselves in the process. You see, I’ve come to discover that many of us hide a shameful secret. Much as Desperate Housewives watchers can get by and even thrive in day to day life but harbor their closeted dysfunction, so too do many of us go around putting on a game, proud face, but privately have no idea what a palmetto really is.
There. I’ve said it. Many South Carolinians haven’t a clue what a palmetto is. Well, actually, they have a clue, but they haven’t the foggiest of what separates a palmetto from a palm tree. I know this because every day I see plenty of South Carolina merchandise, proudly displayed on clothing, stickers, and flags, that features a palm instead of a palmetto.
Surely, one might think, we can’t be so unobservant as not to notice our state tree (we are the Palmetto State, after all) missing from much of this merchandise. One would be wrong. Perhaps one simply thinks that it’s not an issue what tree is on the flag if they’re so similar. Yet again, one is wrong, and that’s the embarrassing part.
Texans don’t screw up the Lone Star flag. One never sees a Texan sporting that flag with an octagonal star on it. Surely, if one can allow a palm instead of a palmetto, one can allow 60% more star (the extra three points) for the Texans. Suggest that to a Texan and see what he thinks.
No, I, for one, am sure that this is not a matter of not caring about the difference between the palmetto and the palm; it must be due to ignorance. Fret not though, this isn’t an indictment of the guilty reader. Extraordinarily intelligent people commit this error all the time and in the most egregious ways. My examples: we even have the palm tree on the logo of our state university. Feel free to go to www.sc.edu. There, in the top left-hand corner, one will see plain as day, a representation of a palm tree between the fabled gates of the Horseshoe. Shoot, even our license plates feature what looks suspiciously like a palm tree (This wouldn’t be the first time that the state got a bit confused. Some argued that the old license plates in use from 1991-1998 featured a Bananaquit, a smaller, similar bird, as opposed to the state bird, the Carolina Wren.).
If our state government and educators have made this mistake it is most definitely time for a quick lesson to put us back on the right track. When I began my research into the differences between palms and palmettos, I quickly discovered, as many of the more intelligent and informed readers are no doubt aware, that the palmetto is a palm; however, a bit like a square is a rectangle, but not vice versa, a palm is not necessarily a palmetto.
Suffice it to say that my meager intellect was hardly up to the challenge of figuring out all this botany, especially when I discovered that the state tree, the Sabal palmetto, is also referred to as the cabbage palm, so I high-tailed it for help.
As one could hardly expect a Carpenter to write something in The Mercury without referencing other Carpenters, I contacted my uncle, Dr. David H. Carpenter Jr, a recently retired professor from the University of South Carolina and a botanist of no small renown, to see if I could get an expert to weigh in on this (minor) controversy. Fortunately, he was able to shed some light.
“Our Palmetto tree is a palm. The Palm family (Arecaceae) has hundreds of kinds of palms world- wide in the tropics; however there are only three (native) kinds in the southeastern US. Two species of palmettos in the Genus Sabal -- Sabal palmetto (our state tree) and Sabal minor (a small shrub like palm in the pine land swamps in coastal regions of SC south). The other is ‘saw palmetto’ Serenoa repens which grows in the same basic habitat as Sabal minor. Commonly, the palms are divided into the feather palms and the fan palms. All of ours are fan palms.”
The last two sentences helped me greatly because, shy of minutiae regarding growth rates and trunk length, the main thing that separates the imposter palms of our state merchandise from the real deal palmettos are the fronds. So, for you, the readers of The Mercury, whom I know shall lead the charge to rectify our collective mistake, I offer to you the following easy-to-use guide:
Please. Use it. Tell a friend. Spend wisely on the proper merchandise. After all, our state pride is at stake; we’ve got to fix this before the Texans find out.
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