Ok, so before you panic and worry about how serious it was, Mat is fine and well. I just thought I’d sensationalise the heading a wee bit 
Yesterday Mat was pruning a large Blue Gum. On finishing the job he made his usual rapid descent out of the tree and landed straight on top of a perfectly positioned bit of pheonix palm throng. Someone must have been previously pruning the palm nearby and done a bad clean up job, leaving a big chunk with the nasty spine end sticking up at the perfect level for piercing Mat’s calf.
For those of you who haven’t had the delightful experience of a Pheonix Palm they have these long palm fronds (or throngs) with pinnate leaves which metamorphose into long viscious spines near the base. They are pretty easy to spike yourself with when handling, snapping off and leaving bits embedded in your skin. Mat has had a fair few spikings whilst doing tree work in Australia but luckily they have only been small bits and haven’t festered too much, gradually working their own way out after a few weeks. If you’re unlucky the wound can go septic or cause blood poisoning, supposedly because possums like to live in the palms causing the spikes to get coated with possum piss and other nasty bacteria.
This is a picture of a pheonix palm that Mat felled a while ago at Randwick Racecourse. Normally they would have to be climbed, the throngs all cut off (for some poor groundy to carefully get rid of) and then chogged down in bits. However, the size of the racecourse meant they could be felled in one for the excavator to come and take away and dump straight into the tub grinder. You can guage the size of this palm from Mat’s ute on the right!
They are fairly harmless at this size (unless you are the unfortunate one having to climb it for dead throng removal etc). However (more…)
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