Why the palm tree explodes ...

Recently, we did a story at Design of Life blog on the explosive palm tree of Madagascar.

One scientist suggested that maybe the tree has "selfish genes". The idea is that the selfish genes encourage the tree to self-destruct, so the genes can spread themselves into seeds.

I thought about this and replied,

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I don’t think selfish gene theory is a good explanation, for the following reason: The tree would produce many more offspring if it did what maples do, and flowered more moderately for eighty years. (Actually, some maples hang on for about two hundred years, and flower.)

More likely, the palm can’t do things any other way than it does. Any tree-level plant would be better off to flower more than once in a hundred years, as the explosive palm does.

There are only a hundred or so of these Madagascar explosive palms in existence - and that doesn’t surprise me. That tree would likely go extinct in a forest fire - except that it will now be dug up and carted off to conservatories and public and private gardens. But that's not nature, that's people.

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I think selfish gene theory was invented to support a failing theory - in this case, Darwinism.