palm leaf

(noun)

A material used for writing and the creation of manuscripts in South Asia and Southeast Asia dating back to the 5th century BCE, and possibly much earlier.

Related Terms

Examples of palm leaf in the following topics:

  • Jain Illustrated Manuscripts

    • Jain illustrated manuscripts, originally painted on palm leaf, were characterized by sharp outlines and depictions of Jain saviors.
    • Painted on palm leaf, these illustrations relied on sharp outlines for effect, becoming progressively more angular and wiry until barely a trace of naturalism is left.

  • Painting in Southeast Asia

    • Artists worked in perishable mediums, painting mostly on wood, cloth, and palm leaf, none of which have withstood the rigors of the Southeast Asian climate.

  • Indonesian Painting

    • These classical paintings can usually be found in Indonesian lontar or palm-leaf manuscripts and on the ceilings of Balinese temples.

  • Types of Leaf Forms

    • In a simple leaf, such as the banana leaf, the blade is completely undivided.
    • An example of this type is the maple leaf.
    • In a compound leaf, the leaf blade is completely divided, forming leaflets, as in the locust tree.
    • A palmately compound leaf has its leaflets radiating outwards from the end of the petiole, like fingers off the palm of a hand.
    • In a pinnately compound leaf, the middle vein is called the midrib.

  • Overharvesting

    • Depleting the numbers or amount of certain resources can also change their quality; for example, the overharvesting of footstool palm (a wild palm tree found in Southeast Asia, the leaves of which are used for thatching and food wrapping) has resulted in its leaf size becoming smaller.

  • Functions of Stems

    • A stem may be unbranched, like that of a palm tree, or it may be highly branched, like that of a magnolia tree.
    • The stalk that extends from the stem to the base of the leaf is the petiole.
    • An axillary bud is usually found in the axil (the area between the base of a leaf and the stem) where it can give rise to a branch or a flower.
    • The petiole is the stalk connecting the leaf to the stem.

  • Leaf Structure and Arrangment

    • Each leaf typically has a leaf blade called the lamina, which is also the widest part of the leaf.
    • The edge of the leaf is called the margin .
    • Within each leaf, the vascular tissue forms veins.
    • The arrangement of veins in a leaf is called the venation pattern.
    • A leaf may seem simple in appearance, but it is a highly-efficient structure.

  • Root Modifications

    • In screwpine, a palm-like tree that grows in sandy tropical soils, aerial roots develop to provide additional support that help the tree remain upright in shifting sand and water conditions.
    • Some plants, however, such as leaf succulents and cacti, store energy in their leaves and stems, respectively, instead of in their roots.

  • Evolution of Gymnosperms

    • The Jurassic period was as much the age of the cycads (palm-tree-like gymnosperms) as the age of the dinosaurs.
    • This fossilized leaf is from Glossopteris, a seed fern that thrived during the Permian age (290–240 million years ago).

  • Stem-and-Leaf Displays

    • A basic stem-and-leaf display contains two columns separated by a vertical line.
    • This can be done most easily, if working by hand, by constructing a draft of the stem-and-leaf display with the leaves unsorted, then sorting the leaves to produce the final stem-and-leaf display.
    • The stem-and-leaf display is drawn with two columns separated by a vertical line.
    • This allows the stem-and-leaf plot to retain its shape, even for more complicated data sets:
    • This is an example of a stem-and-leaf display for EPA data on miles per gallon of gasoline.