Aller traced Kate’s early palms (including those on Horton Plaza, Sixth Avenue, and Orange Avenue in Coronado) to seeds acquired by a nurseryman from a South African conservatory 40 years earlier. That would have dated them to 1892.

Dear Matthew Alice: When I was serving a sentence in the Navy in the ’70s, there was a salty rumor floating around that I accepted as gospel. First: The Coronado bridge is designed to float …

Dear Matthew Alice: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Some say yes. Some say no. What is behind the question? — …

Dear Matthew Alice: How come carnivorous animals can eat raw meat but we humans must cook it or else we get sick? Did we invent fire so long ago that we have biologically come to …

“What’s developed since, are ‘personality bunnies,’ items as Willy Wacket, a hollow bunny with a tennis ball and tennis racket. There’s Dapper Dan, a hollow milk chocolate fellow who wears a pink candy top hat.”