I've recently been taking note of the different type of palms in different places. This after recently exploring Sydney and the Gold Coast on Windows Live and Google. And who could forget the giant Washingtonians that criss cross the LA area.
The cabbage palms go up as far as Virginia Beach! (Though I think many of them were damaged in some of the storms they've been having over the years). But they are only around the hotels on the beach (and there's one cluster of them at some drive in business a few miles inland near a place called Indian River).
I was surprised, as when you travel south by the 95 (which is inland until Florida), you don't see any palms until you hit Savannah, and those are the "cabbage" species too, and even then, there are not an awful lot. Then, when you enter Florida, you see them a lot more (including the little pairs of cabbage variety in the median of the highway), and you start seeing the other varieties too.
Of course, here in NYC, we had about 12 of them in the World Financial Center. I believe they survived the 9/11 attack (even though the glass dome they were under was damaged). They looked like cabbage palms, but kept growing towards the dome, so maybe they were Washingtonians? (Don't know why they would put those in a limited height indoor space). Don't know what they will do when they run out of space, and I haven't been there in years.
(Otherwise, in NY, the ailanthus altissimas and acacia berlandieris (which are typical deciduous trees) always reminded me of palms because of the pinnate leaf arrangement).
The date palms are the nicest.
When I see the spidery leaves of these things, it reminds me of the kinds of creatures probably crawling on them in the tropical areas.