Coconuts catch fire to fight bugs

A torch to the crown of a living tree sounds like arson, but for a coconut palm, it is a life-saving surgery. Farmers in tropical regions intentionally set the leafy tops of their palms on fire to stop the Rhinoceros Beetle from eating the tree from the inside out.

Fire clears the dense, fibrous debris where these heavy-armored pests hide and breed. The intense heat kills the beetle larvae instantly, yet the palm survives because its growing point, the heart, is insulated by layers of moist tissue that act like a natural firewalls.

While a typical hardwood tree would die if its canopy were incinerated, the coconut palm is technically a woody monocot, more closely related to grass than an oak. Its vascular system isn't a single ring under the bark, but thousands of individual straw-like vessels scattered throughout the trunk.