Not all palms bear coconuts

How folks, including me, get strange ideas in their heads is interesting. I fancy myself having a fairly decent understanding of most things biological, but for some reasons I had assumed the palm trees bear coconuts and that was that. Somehow in this misunderstanding there must be some nugget of insight. All of us have limited life experiences whether we know it or not and those experiences we have not had offer the possibility of learning things we presently do not assume we do not know. I apologize for the last sentence, but I am not going to try it again.

So, we like acai bowls and know that the redish/purpleish slush that is the base of the acai bowl comes from a berry of some sort. The images that follow are acai bowls. You can't see the acai because it is located at the bottom of the bowl. I think you can get an acai bowl at the COSTCO food stand and this would be a way to taste what I describe. You can also purchase the frozen berries there to make your own (acai, granola, bananas, and peanut butter is a great combination).

Convinced these berries must be grown on the island somewhere I did a little online research. This is where I learned that the berry grows on palm tree and palm trees produce something other than coconuts. 

From my research I learned that the berry grows in this fringy type stuff I realized I had observed  below the fronds on palm trees. No berries, but the location seemed to match where the berries would appear.

We then spotted these berries. There were located in the right place on the tree. Natasha found one on the ground. It was obviously red and not purple, but also larger and more oblong than the berry we were looking for. However, again, we had not seen any alternatives to this palm so perhaps the berry had yet to ripen.

I use an app on my phone that allows the identification of unfamiliar plants. It is called Plant Snap. if you are an iPhone user and think plant identification is interesting the app might be useful. I loaded the image you see above into PlantSnap and the match came back as Manila or Christmas Palm. The color, size, and time of year for the berries and the information that this is an ornamental palm common in Hawaii convinced me that we have yet to discover an example of the source of the elusive acai berry. This is not the palm you seek.

P.S. - the acai bowl from Costco.