Not Kenya-related, but pretty cool

Yes, I know this is a blog about Kenya. However, since I related similar news stories about Madagascar to my students in the past, I just have share, on the off-chance that any of them are still out there reading this.

Botanists have discovered a previously-unknown tree species living in Madagascar. The palm tree flowers only once after 100 years, and the effort of flowering weakens the tree to the point that it dies off within months.

No one is sure how this species has been missed until now, or even how it got to Madagascar. It closely resembles a palm-tree species found more than 3,700 miles away in Asia. Botanists therefore theorize that the tree has been living unnoticed on the island since Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent 80 million years ago.

Ever since my time in Madagascar with the Peace Corps, I have found it fascinating that new plants and animals are still being discovered on the big red island.

To read more about this latest discovery, click here.