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The Sabal Palm
A Native Monarch

The Sabal Palm Cover

Wide-ranging, simply written and sprinkled with folksy wisdom and humor, The Sabal Palm, A Native Monarch is a unique book about a truly singular plant.

Known as the "tree of life" among some Native American groups, the Sabal palmetto is a veritable supermarket for the people, plants and animals with which it shares the environment. Commonly called both the sable palm and the vabbage palm, the Sabal palmetto thrives throughout the lower southeastern United States and is the state tree of both Florida and South Carolina.

Barbara Oehlbeck's study of Sabal Palmetto is an enlightening work ... [which] represents dedicated appreciation and study, as well as love and honor for the gifts of Nature that man cannot enhance . . . . It also represents a deep and abiding knowledge of the fact that once these gifts are lost, they cannot be replaced.

- Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of The Everglades: River of Grass

Editorial Review
Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 1, 1997
A fascinating tale of the Sabal palmetto, the state tree of Florida and South Carolina. Unlike horticultural writers who get bogged down in scientific names and esoterica, Oehlbeck has made the sabal come alive.

Book Description
This exhaustively researched yet simply written book includes the sabal palm's life history, its relationship with man and place within natural systems. With an introduction by Marjory Stoneman Douglas and a chapter by James Billie, Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida as well as contributions by other prominent botanists and conservationists, the book also includes delightful miscellany such as first-person accounts of 18th-century botanists of the tree, how hummingbirds construct nests using the trees, instructions on how to grow the trees from seed and transplant them and how to build a flutter mill of the fronds.

Hardcover: 86 pages, 11.2 x 9 x 0.5 inches $29.95

 

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