The palm family, Arecaceae, is primarily a tropical family of tree, shrub, and vining monocotyledonous plants, remarkable for the size that many attain without secondary growth (the ability to regenerate
vascular
tissue in their stems as is present in woody dicots). There are at least twenty-seven hundred species of palms, arranged in about two hundred genera. Palms have the largest leaves of any plant, and their leaves are either fan-shaped (palmate, like a hand) or featherlike (pinnate, with many individual leaflets arranged along a central axis). The stems may be solitary or clustering. In time, many palms form tall woody trunks with the leaves clustered in an aerial ...
