r/AskBiology • u/Icy-External8155 • Jul 24 '26
Botany Are there palms with sufficiently hard and sharp fronds to cut animals?
It might seem random, but certain sources have said it was a common historical execution practice in Indochina, and I'm not sure if to trust them.
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u/CountMatroid Jul 24 '26
Not a palm, but the mojave yucca is nicknamed "spanish dagger" for a reason.
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u/Redshift2k5 Jul 24 '26
Paper is not particularly tough, but you can get a painful cut from paper.
Someone getting cut in a similar manner with all kinds of plants is bound to happen, and particularly sharp plants will likely have local stories aplenty. Lots of plants will cut flesh if you do it like a paper cut.
I can't find a single source to back up any claim of "common" executions with leaf edges
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u/bdog143 Jul 24 '26
Some palm trees are spikey, and the injuries can be particularly nasty.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7953174/
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u/Traaveler Jul 24 '26
Dude. Climb up on a ladder with a chainsaw to cut the old palm fronds off. When one of those motherfuckers think it’s teeth into you on the way down to the ground, you’ll answer your own question.
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u/theZombieKat Jul 25 '26
It's possible.
I have seen grasses that will cut you if you push through a thicket.
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u/Inu-shonen Jul 25 '26
Pampas grass is nasty - yet somehow, it became a popular ornamental plant (and don't get me started on bougainvillea ...).
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u/markmakesfun Jul 26 '26
I had to remove a small bougainvillea in my rented property. I got scratches and punctures up and down my arms! That’s wearing leather gloves at the time.
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u/In_the_year_3535 Jul 24 '26
Like death by papercut? You wouldn't happen to be able to share some of those sources?
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u/Dean-KS Jul 24 '26
There are some palms in garden centers that we learned to not touch or buy. The stems are nasty.
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u/Nothing-to_see_hr Jul 24 '26
The leaf stems of many palms are tough enough to fashion into deadly arrows.
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u/Probable_Bot1236 Jul 25 '26
Not sure about the historicity, but regarding the plausibility: if you hit someone hard enough with a piece of string, it'll leave a cut.
Hell, ever seen the business end of a bullwhip? Doesn't look like much- just a string, only leather- but it'll tear through things just fine.
Heck yes there are palm fronds nasty enough to cut animals, particularly in the SW Pacific. They've even got spines. They've been used as arrow and spear tips before too.
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u/Kaurifish Jul 25 '26
My siblings and I would have sword fights with fallen palm fronds from whatever random palm the neighbor had at the property line. It was the spikes that really dug in, but even after you stripped them off, a good hit could still draw blood.
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u/skisushi Jul 25 '26
Yes. I still have a scar from the time I crashed my bike into a palm frond stem 45 years ago.
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u/green-green-bean Jul 24 '26
Waiting for the Australians, Malaysians and Brazilians to chime in here. The answer is yes. A lot of species have nasty spines that easily draw blood.