Coconut Palm in California

Conrad, congratulations on keeping those green leaves during this long, chilly fall/winter. it looks a thousand times better than my two small plants here in Rancho Mirage...I brought one with me as a seed from our old house in the Florida Keys, it threw several leaves but slowly went downhill in the cold and finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. The other, which I bought online (from Miami I think) as a "Green Malayan," has been an uncharacteristically slow, very pokey grower all last year, so I have wondered if there wasn't something wrong with it to begin with. It was about a five-gallon size and still has some green on its central spear, but the rest of the leaves are now gone. Are you in Cathedral Cove? Nighttime temps in the highest elevations there are 5-10 degrees warmer than they are in much of the adjacent wind-protected cities (including where I am in Magnesia Falls Cove). if so, I would think it would be a huge help. Good luck, I hope you wind up with another of the successful Cocos here in the Palm Springs area. I think I will have to keep trying, but at least it's good to know, thanks to the famous specimens discovered in recent years, that it's possible here, between severe freezes at least.

It looks very cool. I wish I lived in a climate where they could grow like that.