Square-Account Palm

Description

A Californian fan palm in the centre bed of the Palm House. Its single grey trunk, swollen at the base and ringed with leaf scars, stands 11.4 m tall below a trimmed skirt of dead fronds. The grey-green costapalmate leaves reach 1.6 m across and are split a third of their depth into drooping segments that shed curled white threads. The petioles carry hooked teeth. Cream flowers open in arching panicles in July, followed by small black drupes.

Observations

The sky directly above the crown is overcast whenever any two people beneath it owe each other money. The cloud is a low grey patch about forty metres across, centred on the palm and visible from the street. It forms within a minute of the second party stepping under the crown and clears within four minutes of the debt being paid. The amount does not matter; a halfpenny has been recorded. A debt the lender writes off aloud counts as paid. One forgiven in silence does not.

The file

The palm was raised in 1891 in the yard of the Arrieta net loft, Lekeitio, from seed posted home by a son in Los Angeles. Martín Uriarte, enumerating the street for the census, noted that the yard was “always grey on Thursdays, clear on Fridays, when the menders are paid.” In 1898 he shipped it from Bilbao in a fish crate. Edwin Thorley, Keeper of the Glasshouse 1919–1946, assembled this file.

Job book — Palm House and boilers

Palm House maintenance log, kept by F. Hesketh, stoker, with pencil margin notes by E. Thorley, Keeper

Job 302 — Palm House short of heat

14 October 1926. Sun on the Orchid House across the path, cloud over the Palm House only. 52 °F at noon against 60 wanted. Second boiler lit. Fenwick and Coyle arguing by the palm about the boiler inspector’s visit. Nine shillings said to be owing.

Margin, E.T.: Local fog. Raise the boiler, not the subject.

Job 331 — Sun through south lights

3 March 1927, 7.40 a.m. Coyle paid Fenwick nine shillings under the palm, two half-crowns and four shillings, and asked me to witness. Sun through the south lights at 7.44, first time since October. Second boiler let out.

Pinned to the page, telegram form in Thorley’s hand:

POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS. Handed in 8.05 a.m. To: Dr R. Maitland, Director, Inverleith, Edinburgh. Words: 6.

CLOUD CLEARED ANTICYCLONE NOTHING TO REPORT = THORLEY

Margin: Weather. See Met. Office daily report for the 3rd.

Job 334 — Overcast, ten minutes

2.15 p.m. Overcast again. Apprentice Pyle owes me a penny for tea. Paid 2.21, sun 2.24.

Margin: Do not log tea.

Job 340 — Tin wanted for potting bench

A tin for the potting bench, so the men can square up on Fridays before they go under the palm. Requisition to Keeper.

Margin: Petty cash. Signed. E.T.

First Friday: four men and the Keeper, one and elevenpence. The Keeper’s sixpence was owed me from Christmas. Sun by 3.30.

Genetic analysis

Read from leaf tissue (2n = 36), with a GC content of 38.9% across the sampled region. The lowercase stretch lies 210 bases upstream of a PIF4-like shade-avoidance gene. Cut while no accounts are open beneath the crown, it is a perfect 24-base palindrome. Cut while debts stand, it carries one mismatched base per open account, in no fixed position. The fragment shown was cut on a Friday afternoon, after the tin.

Cultivation

Deep, free-draining loam, a minimum of 7 °C, water weekly in summer and monthly in winter. It needs full light, and has not had it on any working day when a debt stood open in the house. Dead fronds are cut yearly; the white threads are left on.

Seedlings raised in 1958 and 1994 behave as ordinary palms.

Effects

Fuel returns for the Palm House have always run above those for houses of the same volume. The accounts office stopped querying the margin in 1952.

The staff settle up. Tea money, bus fares and the football pool are cleared at the tin on Fridays, and new gardeners learn the custom within a week.

Visitors rarely affect it, except families: a child who owes a brother pocket money keeps the house overcast for the whole visit. The guides carry a few coins to make up the difference.