This morning I walked around the house looking for subject matter for Day 24. I ended up shooting this palm frond and then took it into the digital darkroom of my laptop and applied a color gradient to it just for fun.

If palm trees make you think of tropical sun and white sugary beaches, it’s understandable. Palms have become a symbol for warm coasts and tropical vacations. Most palm trees do, indeed, like warm climates, and thrive in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 8 through 10. But palms are of the Arecaceae plant family with 181 genera and 2,600 species, and include many and diverse species found everywhere from deserts to rain forests. Most palms have fronds — large, compound, evergreen leaves arranged at the top of an unbranched trunk. But palms vary in many ways too.