Sotetsu: Japanese Sago Palm
(Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo on Jul.11)
It is said Japanese sago palms growing wild in the southern part of Kyushu and Okinawa and the southern part of China are the most primitive gymnosperms and living fossils.
It is supposed to take 40 years or more for their stems to grow one meter because of their extremely slow growth pace. They are usually 1 to 4 meters tall but some are about 10 meters tall with the estimated age of over 1000 years.
The name of Sotetsu means to revive with iron, that is, if you hit iron nails in their spritless stems, they will revive.
The photograph shows a male tree of Sotetsu.
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