Leaderboard

And this weeks plant fix is a doozy of a fix. As usual some great actually fantastic plants this week to add to the garden in a few years time. It never ends with so many new plants available now with the internet and online ordering if I could import live plants I would, it is possible to do so but very expensive and time consuming also iam not going to deal with the red tape involved the way customs have been with seed imports. So this week we have as follows a sonerila extra spotty purchased for a stock plant to take cuttings from. The packaging is exceptionally good you unbox them and it’s like you just picked them up from the nursery but better. A microsorium whiteheadii a sumatran fern that takes the cold I already have one that has survived three winters well. Next is a calytrocalyx tininum, alocasia equiloba aka spotted papua, licuala png dwarf, Areca song thonhensis, Calpytrocalyx julianettii, Ptychococcus species and a aroid sp hapaline benthamiana. Some good winners there for a zone push some proven some will need to carefully watched in winter to see how they go. Also on a good note I have booked a session with a psychologist to see if therapy is really needed for my addiction but I know what I will be telling them forget it I don’t won’t a cure just give me more plants to buy doc!

Just an update for everyone, I was able to prop roots with Kiki’s cloning paste and one of those prop balls with tree fern about 3.5’ from the base! I’ll try to remember to come back and update in a few months if it takes. 🤞🫶🏻

It most certainly is the best food a palm can get. That's what they eat in there natural habitat. I just chop my ones up when I get around to it if there green or desiccated either way chop them up it’s fantastic mulch. Your garden will love it. I don’t look at the botanical garden good look nice wood chip or super good looking mulch point of view I look at practically that works creating a natural environment in my garden. And any gardener will agree any mulch is better than no mulch be it a nice botanical garden or a paradise created at home if it works keep doing it!

Out of the fifty plus King palms in my garden, four have some cracking and it hasn’t harmed them in any way. Not sure exactly what causes it since all my Kings are watered heavily and three are growing right in stagnant water 365 days per year with no cracks.

Ended up with ~37F here and in the hourly reports at the airport. There was frost on the rooftops, ice on the cars, and the yards without trees had frost in the grass. Fortunately, the trees in the front and back are enough to keep my slice of paradise frost-free. The numbers for Florida's airports are in the attached zip file. Hopefully we'll get the warmer weather that is currently forecast for next week. I'm with @SubTropicRay - over it already and it we haven't had a freeze yet. 20241204_NWS.zip

@Debb nice to meet you! I have a palm jungle and no lawn and lots of palm leaves, and mixing dead plant stuff with wood ashes makes them rot a lot faster. To hack up royal palm fronds, get a machete. Great after a bad day at the plant, clinic or office to let off a little steam.

A nice understory palm iam looking forward to growing in the garden. It has survived winter in the greenhouse so in the ground it goes to see how it goes some palms I give extra special attention to when planting with good soil amendment and irrigation just to give them the best start in life considering how long they will live for for, it’s the best thing I can do for them for what they offer in return of plant harmony and beauty in the garden, Thermal mass will be used to protect this one from the cold with a huge rock right next to it which was part of the original landscaping I did 25 years ago so making good use of the old for the new, the established garden eats small palms for breakfast if I don’t give the correct attention to planting details. So another palm is added to the collection in the ground the future garden is looking good so far.

It appears to be a Coccothrinax hybrid with a little borhidiana (fiber type) in it. I have a couple community pots going of these borhidiana hybrids. Here's one of mine to compare. Anyways,that's my guess. Is that in a 1 gallon pot? aztropic Mesa, Arizona

The pods are actually edible but I have no interest in that. The seeds or beans are used to make chocolate. I doubt I will ever get to that point though. For me it’s just a thing to try to grow. The weird thing is that people eat the pod raw but the seed needs to be fermented to get the cocoa flavor.

That’s why I purchased 300 seeds from rps I absolutely love them I only have around 7 mature females and only 1 male plant. I do get the odd seed but nowhere near enough to plant a grove of 100 that I wish to have.

Harry, this palm is almost always available from Jeff at Floribunda. I have purchased "1-gallon" sized plants that had emergent stems and flowerstalks.

So far the coldest I have for the season, according to the two nearest weather stations, is 42.3 and 43.3, on 12/03

I work in technology and am regularly a part of AI initiatives designed to deploy to retail clients. ChatGPT is wild but most AI isn't as good as the public is led to believe - at least not yet.

Hovered at 40 all night last night. Ultimate low at or just below 33 on the tempest for two nights. No damage under trees on anything uncovered except ragged looking sanchezia. Three covered plants have damage from the sheet placed on them, the carpoxylon possibly due to afternoon sun on the cover i forgot to take off. Very much over it lol. Nothing more than cosmetic issues though.

Yes. It’s very weird. They also stick them in various other tight spaces around the house… between the gutter and wall, in crooks in trees and in palm boots. I was working outside one day, and one flew up and tried to hammer a peanut into one of those plastic clam rat traps that I tied to that gutter bend up there. He then got his foot caught in the trap. Luckily it’s a plastic trap without much tension, so the foot was actually ok. I freed him within seconds and checked him out and let him go. I watched him get caught, trying to put a peanut into the trap!

Fresh Clinostigma sp.

Hello and thank you for posting . I am in Santa Paula , about 10 miles east of you and a bit warmer . I water my Archontophoenix about every other day . I have wood chips as well , like you and that helps hold moisture . I have had some cracking on a couple palms before and it hasn’t hurt them . I guess my Kings and my Ravenna get the most water of all my palms and they are not cracked . I have heard that overwatering can cause problems like that but I have not had the issue from all the water I give the Kings. Harry

Instant gratification! Here is a Chatham Island R. salida 8' or 9' tall from the top of the container (15 gal). $225

Who knows where my label went as I have had this beauty before I switched to secure stainless steel and brother EZ tape labels. Your help much appreciated to find the correct genus and species as an online search just left me confused.

If you use blankets or sheets use thicker ones. I put some on my spindles that were thin sheets as precaution and made a mistake on the fronds. Two with the sheet resting on the surface transfered the cold and damaged a frond. The one sheet that fell off (no clips and i did it in the dark) had no visible dark spots on it this morning like the two others. The fronds were tucked in and not in their usual position, so the sheet on top of the flat frond (large surface area to conduct energy away) plus a tiny bit of frost to chill through the thin fabric, did some cosmetic damage. Thicker blankets were perfect on anything else, but damage will show later on with warmth (if there is any more damage) so crossing my fingers there. I do not use anything active like heat cables, since we dont get that low typically and a cover works, just have to use the right one the right way. Atypical but not unheard of for december, hopefully whatever warm up comes lasts into january and moderates the next cold front, but the Hudson bay vortex is stubborn in models so who knows?

I have the biggest problem with Raccoons. They dig out seedlings to eat the seeds, they eat all my fruit, they dig holes in my yard looking for grubs, and there was one with rabies a few years ago that was stumbling around my yard and Animal control wouldn't come check unless it had already bitten someone. Trapping them works for a while but they usually start becoming an issue again about 6 months after trapping. Squirrels are also an issue, but only with my orchids and air plants. I've had good luck protecting my epiphyte tree by just making sure the branches aren't touching any other structures to close off their access point and wrapping the lower trunk with spikes.

One of the most annoying things here is when blue jays hammer peanuts into bromeliad centers…. First they pick a bromeliad with a center hole that a shelled peanut will not quite fit into. They they fly off an get a shelled peanut. They hammer it in, like a woodpecker, wedging it deep in the hole. Often they will then go get a stone about the same size, and put that on top next, and hammer that in place, creating a secure locker to store their peanut that they will never come back for. It then ferments in the water in there if you don’t notice, rotting out your prized bromeliad. They always pick a super nice tubular bromeliad in a pot (especially hohenbergia or billbergia) to do this number on. I have to go around with long pickups and needle nose pliers to try to fish them out before the inevitable happens.

Squirrels, Rats, even Possums and Racoons are always checking the pots and bromeliads and sometimes destroying stuff here. If you find lizard legs and half chewed up bodies around, it’s rats. Blue jays hammer peanuts into the bromeliad centers all the time. Mocking birds pluck seeds off of trees all the time. Raccoons do the most damage in a single night, but rats are insidious and very, very smart and cautious. You have to rotate trap types and baits, and still big old adults are hard to catch. Juveniles and youngsters mostly make mistakes getting trapped. Squirrels are pretty dumb and bold and easy to catch. Mice are the super-dumb dums. If you have a Wi-Fi security camera, detach it and bait it and you’ll see who stops by. At least possums clean up the dead. IMG_3508.MOV IMG_3509.MOV IMG_3510.MOV

I'm experimenting with several of these on Vancouver Island zone 8a/b.

Here are current pix of my Zantesdeschia aethiopica (striped Calla lily) at the start of winter here. Where I am it has a very brief dormant period then sends up new leaves fast! I grow it in a pot, under the shade of my pergola.

Pinanga caesia Lanonia dasyantha Basselinia eriostachys

I would like to emphasize what aztropic said about placing the palm in full shade if you take it outside. Palms accustomed to indoors can have all their fronds burnt off by direct sunlight in less than an hour, depending on the intensity of the sun.

If bringing it outside for the summer, you need to locate it in an area with FULL SHADE. (little to no direct sunlight) Otherwise,the existing fronds WILL sunburn,and the plant will be in worse shape than if you had just left it inside. aztropic Mesa, Arizona

It is a Parlor Palm, Chamaedorea elegans, and it is the tallest one I have ever seen... incredible. The fact that it has been saved and cared for all this time is a great achievement. Jim is correct, it is a male/female species so two plants are needed for seed production. Plants of this species have been known to live for a long time, but your specimen is exceptionally tall, and I don't know how that effects its lifespan. Some palms are affected by the height of their trunk/stem in regard to their lifespan; the taller the stem, the harder it gets to bring water and nutrients to the crown. Leave the fronds as is. As long as there is any green, the leaf is working. Brown old leaves usually fall away off on their own. It seems the upper half of the stem is keeping the brown leafbases persistent. I do not know why, unless they are just held in place by themselves. Usually, they fall off along with the leaves as they are shed. -- As is, the palm looks as it is supposed to be, an old, old plant. It could just be coming out of the winter and might look better with time. Is it definitely in a decline? It could look like that all the time and be healthy. Hard to say without a reference. I have seen very old specimens in containers look just like that (just not as tall). If you think the height is a health issue or an encumbrance to keeping the palm, there is a possible action: There is an advanced propagation technique known as air-layering that has been used on certain palms like Parlor Palms to shorten their stems. There are books and videos out there that explain the procedure in detail, but basically you are creating a new ball of roots at a node along the stem. Certain nodes will send out little roots on their own sometimes, just out into the air. The roots emerge from the node and grow into a medium such as damp sphagnum moss held in place by tightly wrapped aluminum foil. After the roots fill the moss inside the foil, the stem is cut below the air-layer. Then the upper plant, with new roots, is planted in a new pot (minus the foil). Air-layering can take time, it can be tricky and does not always work. I also do not know how it would work indoors, with air conditioning i.e. a dry environment. But I have seen it done on old Parlor Palms. Unlike traditional air-layering, you do not need to cut into the stem or remove bark on a Parlor Palm. During the pandemic, I rescued a Parlor Palm (decades old, again not as tall) and when I went to pot it up, I noticed it originated as an air-layer. I still have him in a pot. Ryan

So I was driving in the neighborhood yesterday and saw this very tropical looking tree that has very ferny/legume-like foliage - similar to Delonix regia or Senegalia berlandieri- but is very large and has very rough bark. From what I can tell on street view it was planted as a large sized (box) tree in either 2012 or 2013. It had an absolutely great form and suffered no noticeable die-back until the storm that dare not speak its name whacked it back in 2021. Even so, a large portion of the very thick trunk survived and the tree has grown back remarkably well. Only question I have is what is it?!

I agree with Coccothrinax. But as for the species, I have no idea. I am surprised they didn't consult with AI. XD People are way too trusting of software these days. (It's a pet peeve of mine).

This is so great! I'm helping my garden! Yay!

Very nice! If the therapist tells you that you have too many plants , stop seeing them immediately. You don’t need negativity in your life! Harry

Cry me a river fella. I have provided valid information for the OP about the climatic requirements to get CIDP to survive, as well as the extent at which they must be protected in unfavourable areas. All that other LIS guy has done is dismiss it all, claim that I am misinforming the OP and then he throws shade at the UK in general. I don’t see you addressing his comments!? I give as good as I get. The only difference is that I am saying it exactly how it is in regards to zone pushing a CIDP in NYC or the northeast of the USA. He can downplay the extent/effort involved in keeping a CIDP alive there, or bang on about irrelevant summer warmth, or how the UK weather is crap, but at the end of the day there has never been a CIDP successfully grown in the northeast USA. Why is that? And then you have this LIS guy implying that it should be fairly straight forward. For transparency / context, this is the protection involved to get a 15 foot CIDP through winter in Poland. Zone 7a, although NYC has had colder ultimate lows than him in recent years. He also gets less snow as well there. And that part of Poland is drier and less humid than NYC as well with a lower water table too. So even if you replicated this level of winter protection for a decent sized specimen, you would still possibly encounter fungal issues and crown rot in NYC that impact spring/summer recovery. Looks easy doesn’t it. 🙄

Why do you do this to yourself? Mate, some of the personal attacks in that last post were pretty uncalled for. Again, please consider this suggestion to chill out...

My property is slopy too and I have a retaining wall on the lower side of about 3 m tall. The all set up looks like a huge mound. You can also build additional mounds on the big mound. Whenever it has rained heavily in my area, I see even the day after pooled water in the plains but up on the hills it does not even stick mud on the shoe soles.

If not offered locally, even if by accidental chance, imagine your hunch ( ..about it being purchased / transported from down south ) is correct.. Trips to pick up stuff in Tucson or CA is often how a lot of the interesting stuff seen in forward thinking yards / landscapes here ends up here. That or started from seed ..which should be pretty easy for these, esp. if as care free about germinating any and everywhere as L. leucocephala is.. Have seen 15gal sized specimens of another, wider -leaved Leucaena sp ( L. lanceolata = Southern Sonora to Chiapas ) offered at a nursery in Tucson from time to time, but no larger specimens yet.

Here are 2 windmill examples from late May 2021. Cleburne, TX. Post palmageddon they are unirrigated and received just over 5" precip post event(Feb). So three months. Yes the grass is green, but it had just began to rain. So yes maybe cold related, maybe drought, or intermittent moisture. Or all 3.

It's always a pleasure to visit Palmetum, every time you notice new improvements and new plants and progress is nicely seen over past few visits. Can't wait to see the new part. Congratulations to Carlo and all people that contribute to this beautiful place.

If it was as simple as you claim it to be, there would be CIDP’s and Washies all over the northeast of the USA that are easily protected in winter and able to thrive throughout the rest of the year. However in reality this is just not the case. Show me one example in NYC for instance of where a CIDP has come through multiple winters with protection? There is none. It just isn’t practical to construct elaborate shelters (which let in sunlight) and rig up heating elements that need to be in place all winter long in that climate as well as some kind of ventilation given the wet-cold and year-round humidity. We are talking about protection that could give out at any time, or be damaged in storms. Not to mention you would need to make it bigger each year, so it quickly becomes impractical and a mammoth undertaking. Not to mention the cost involved. Also CIDP’s become extremely wide and have menacing thorns like hypodermic needles near the crown. As soon as they start gaining size you will have your work cut out trying to get them sheltered for a zone 7b winter. And it becomes a risk to your own safety. This is why you don’t see people doing it. There are rare exceptions to that, like that guy in Poland who protects a CIDP, but in general this concept is just not practical. I could probably grow Royals and Wodyetia here with sophisticated shelters, but like why bother!? It’s too much effort for a species that is just being zone pushed too great and will succumb the second my protection is lacking, or once it becomes too big to protect. The same applies for CIDP in NYC. Good luck though, because you will certainly need all the luck you can get attempting a CIDP in the northeast of the USA. You are naive to insist that it is very doable and that CIDP’s will thrive there, given the clear lack of evidence I.e. examples showing at least some partial success (of which there is none). I suspect people have tried over the years as well, with protection. The OP lost his after an average winter in NYC, despite trying to protect it. So I think you need to wake up and smell the coffee on this one. You can talk about the UK and southern England being cool, damp, cloudy and having crap summers or whatever all you like, but at the end of the day the winters are pretty mild which CIDP like and the summers are warm and dry. Southern England, coastal Oregon and New Zealand all have excellent CIDP’s with near-perfect crowns, despite very little summer heat. However all these places have mild, damp winters and a dry warmish growing season. So go figure. I was not lecturing you on the climate of Florida or NYC specifically. I was lecturing you on the requirements to grow a CIDP. The fact you place so much emphasis on the growing season outside of winter as a factor for their survival in NYC tells me you are clueless on this one. Come back in a few years time when you can show off your zone 7 CIDP in Connecticut, after a few years attempting to protect it. I already know that you won’t be able to come back to report on a positive case study however. I am happy to be proven wrong, please. I would love to see a CIDP thriving in NYC and coming through the winters with sophisticated protection, but as I have previously said, it is not feasible or practical. As for that Washie growing in zone 5 in Canada… he has done very well to keep it going, but it is clearly on borrowed time. Washies are also easier to protect and replenish their crowns quicker than CIDP. Regardless, he won’t be able to protect it forever. Same applies for CIDP or Washingtonia in the northeast of the USA. I mean a ‘bad’ winter will knock out Trachycarpus Fortunei in NYC, even with some protection. So I think you need to come back down to earth pal.

Dear Mr. Morici, Thank you for posting those images, very interesting. Creating a PNG-like area on Tenerife is probably quite a challenge, so I am honestly wishing you and your team all the best! With kind regards from Okinawa - Lars

Anyone growing this sp. out of the tropics ? It sure is a nice looking one and lots of seedlings around that could be spread down south . Clayton is growing it in his protected microclimate , but what about someone over the border ? Sarawak has some pretty high mountains , it could be a highland sp. Mature plant pictured here , as well as a seedling.

I got one via an online auction a few years ago but couldn't even grow it indoors in a plastic bag: Cyrtostachys renda ‘Theodora Buhler'!!'☹️

Oh sorry - me again... But, "you can't beat the view..." Lars

It is a wonderful specimen for a first palm. It has a great history. Trying the air-layering is possible without physical harm, it will work or not, but the palm will expend energy in the attempt. You might not get a strong enough root ball to support the palm and then you have a partial clump of roots hanging in the air. The partial clump might dry out, or cause loss of moisture through evaporation. Then again, it might work perfectly. Most often air-layering is done during the hot, humid time here in S. Florida. It works best when the plant is in full growth, the moss is kept moist with humidity and the tropical growing engine is in full effect. Many growers will not even attempt an air-layer on any plant during our relatively mild winters. How it would work in your situation, I do not know. Bringing it outside for a breather, regular watering and some growing time would be helpful, but definitely heed the warnings above about avoiding any direct full sun. Maneuvering him/her around has got to be a challenge. I can only guess as to how your weather is during the spring and summer, but if it can be warm enough, trying the air-layering outdoors would be better. It will take months for the roots to grow. Another word of caution about bringing the palm outdoors. As a complete indoor plant, he/she will need protection from any severe wind or strong motion that could cause damage. The palm has probably not experienced any crazy weather. It will need support that prevents him/her from falling over and also avoid leaning the stem against anything that would create a fulcrum or breaking point. It will need a protective bubble like for a baby. A very, very tall baby. Ryan