A Palm by Any Other Name

When a palm is not a palm at all, but an odd duck of a succulent.  This is the "trunk" of a Madagascar Palm, which is no more a palm than I am.  It doesn't even look like any sort of palm I've ever known, so I can only assume the person who named it must have been very taxonomically challenged.  They couldn't have been much farther off the mark if they had seen a barn swallow and decided to call it a cow.  8^)