In fact, desert fan palms increase seed production immediately after fires. A healthy palm can produce as many as 350,000 seeds. People have been attracted to palm oases since prehistoric times. American Indians ate palm fruit and used the fronds to build waterproof dwellings. The Cahuillas also planted palm seeds in promising locations.
Water is a necessity.
Desert fan palms suck up water using a mass of pencil-wide rootlets so dense that the roots of other plant species cannot penetrate. This mass may extend as far as 20 feet from the trunk in all directions. But water, in the form of flash floods, is also the most common cause of death for desert fan palms living in narrow canyons. Coyotes help spread palms by eating palm fruit at one location and depositing the undigested seeds at another. The cool shade of an oasis provides habitat for animals that live nowhere else.