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This will likely be the last time I'll get to post about this tremendous success story of growing Satakentia liukiuensis in California. Unfortunately, our home owners insurance has issued us a cancellation notice unless we're able to comply with basically removing all of the palms in close proximity to my home despite all of them being healthy, well watered, and none of them carry a skirt of dead leaves; basically zero risk of catching fire. We've searched around and no other insurance company will cover us as they're all trying desperately to exit the market. The insurance market in CA is a disaster, but that's a story for another day. I figured I'd post pics one last time of this palm that has yet to flower/fruit, but is thriving none the less. It currently stands at 15' tall overall w/ 5' of clear trunk.

Germinated from seed in 2010 my largest Hedyscepe has finally flowered and now setting seed They obviously love my cool humid frost free climate at 42 degrees South.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Tim "Realarch " from Hilo area Hawaii visit my garden. On one of my rare 80f plus days I showed Tim and Bob around my cloud forest at sea level garden. Always great to meet palm people from overseas. Thanks Realarch for coming around and enjoy the Tasmanian seafood tonight Troy

I want to show you guys this Hungarian living in Slovakia how insane he is in a good way! He's growing Hyophorbe lagenicaulis, Bismarckia nobilis, Phoenix roebelenii, Dypsis decaryi, Latania lontaroides, Archontophoenix alexandrae, and other tropical palms and plants planted outside in his garden. In winter, you can see in the video how he protects them with heating cables in the ground and wrapped around the trunk and leaves. He even uses growing lights to keep them alive! This is just insane considering that Slovakia is in Zone 6 You can find him on Facebook as Jardín Tropical 2004! ScreenRecording_02-18-2025 22-55-57_1.mov

In January 2020 I received my Mule Palm from MPOM. Over the last 5 years its grown substantially and now I am faced with a decision to up-pot yet again, sale it, or plant it. Of course I chose to plant it. A new pot the next size up would be about $300, and then what? In 2 years I'll be faced with the same predicament. This mule has endured the last 3 seasons outside since it's been too large to come in the house since 2022. The lowest we've been since then is 10F and its suffered minimal to no damage (granted - I laid it on the ground and threw a bed sheet over it when it got that cold). Otherwise it's stayed outside year-round. Now, before anyone comes for me about planting it (Yes, I'm in zone 8) my logic is that considering its survival and knowing its marginal palm here - I am willing to see what happens. Who knows, maybe we won't have anymore century level events for the next 100 years. *fingers crossed* Anyway, the predicament has been WHERE to plant it; the backyard is quite full these days. So, the decision to remove my Namwah banana mat was made yesterday, and plant the mule in its place. While I love my bananas, and they do extremely well here - the Namwah was the right plant in the WRONG place and was a constant pain to keep off of the fence, and off of the patio. Not to mention I have plenty of other varieties of bananas. I made the right move. After 9 hours with only a quick dinner break today I managed to somehow remove the established mat of namwahs, and excavate a planting hole for the mule. (word to the wise - do not plant bananas without intent. Be sure that's where you want them for all eternity and have ample room around them. Oh, and use heavy lifting equipment if you need to move them.... ugh😫) Post trunk chop from winter and now the heavy lifting begins... About 2.5hours into it and I'm questioning my life choices ..... QUEUE 200 LB POTATO..... After about 6 hours I finally managed to get the giant potato from hell out of the ground and dig out a 2 foot deep 2 foot wide meteor impact crater .... *notice the red clay - if you know you know* Once removed from its prison... er, I mean pot.... I had to do some root pruning/releasing. It was extremely root bound and swirling. Once the mess of roots had been freed from themselves - the rest is the easy part. To settle in I made sure to add plenty of plant tone and water in incrementally as I back filled the hole using a mix of seaweed extract, superthrive, and root stimulator water. Hopefully that will minimize transplant shock. Fingers crossed. I do expect to lose some of the lower fronds just from how aggressive I had to be with the root mass. Finally after about 9 grueling hours, sunburnt and bleeding .... Hopefully the Mule likes this spot as much as the bananas did, and I get to see some explosive growth. As per usual it will receive nothing but regular waterings with seaweed and unsulfured molasses water to establish the root/soil microbiome this season with no fertilizers for the next 90 days. IMG_0208.HEIC

Here’s a double (formerly triple) in the front garden showing of some color.

It has been a bucket list item for me to see these unusual palms in their habitat and was finally able to see them! Also thanks to our local guide Blanco! Click here for complete album with labels

Hey Troy, thanks again for taking the time to show us around. You’ve a lot of amazing plantings packed in there, it was hard keeping up. Your diversity of specimens looked healthy…..you chose well, One always learns new things when making the effort to explore other gardens. The Hedysepe, which you posted photos of in a previous thread, was absolutely beautiful. Impressive Rhopalostylis sapida, Ceroxylon standing by, a fit looking bloke, and some nice tree ferns including this Cyathea brownii from New Guinea. Mahalo agin Troy Tim

Started this from seed from RPS many years ago. Seems to like the hot E. Oahu weater. aloha

It' s sunny today after two weeks of cold and rain, so I ' ll take some new pictures of my C. decipiens after arriving home.

With around 400 plus mm of rainfall since the start of cyclone Alfred. You can literally see the new growth in the garden. You think your watering schedule is enough for good growth, then you get this amount of rainfall in about 4 days and you realise you’re not watering anywhere near enough. Although you can never beat Mother Nature it’s amazing to see this much rainfall in the garden and the affect it has on plants. The ground is saturated when I look at how dry my area can get then it transforms into a tropical jungle in the Amazon. The colours of the plants with light lime green to dark green is amazing.

Today, 18 members of Fous de Palmiers (French Palm Society) visited my Garden on their one week visit to SoFla. Two of them came all the way from the island of Réunion. I showed them my garden and plantings around my neighborhood, then we had lunch at iconic Cuban restaurant Versailles. We all had a great time and the weather was the best ever.

If we form a militia I guess we can hold them off, just kidding! Today all my palms are safe …. and today is really all we have , so enjoy it. Harry So now I have to decide whether to keep the palms and remove the house or…….

I think we need a new updated thread for these palms... Starting with the big one at Overcliffe Gardens near Dublin in Ireland. This is probably the largest Juania in the British Isles. The Earlscliffe Juania was planted very small back i 1995, so it has been in the ground for 30 years now. The earliest photos I can find are from 2002 and 2003. The third photo below shows it in 2009... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next up we have the Juania specimen at Overbeck's Garden in Salcome, Devon. The Overbecks Juania was apparently planted in 1995 as well, but it was a very small seedling back then. the earliest photos I can find for it are from 2011 and 2013. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next up we have another legendary Juania at Glendurgan Gardens in Cornwall that has been in the ground about 25 years as well, alongside Dr Kevin Spence for scale... Here is a grainy photo of the Glendurgan Juania from 2012 before it had properly started trunking... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are other decent specimens in southern England and Ireland, which I will update on in due course...

When I was living in Arizona in 2008, I saw a really nice p. rupicola triple at treeland in chandler. I was inspired by the curved trunks and nice green canopy. When I moved to florida I found a nursery MB palms that carried 1g size rupicolas. I liked the rupicola for its cold tolerance(26F) and its bright green foliage. It also has thorns that don't hurt you, they bend at the base of the thorn. Having been stabbed many times by my various phoenix species I grew in Arizona, I was interested in a pain free trimming process. This triple was planted in early summer 2011 and has been a slow, easy care grower. I thought it might be a permanent hedge but now it looks as if its going to be exactly what I wanted, an attractive medium height canopy for filtering hot western sun. It has fruited 3x the last one a full load of striking red fruits(sorry, no picture). The three palms grew away from each other more than any triple I ever tried, no need to tilt a palm when planting. Here is a pic taken today of the overall palm, and a close up of the trunks. just after a post hurricane Milton trim of the many(30-35) dead leaves After many of my other palms have grown tall and more difficult to view into the crown this one still gives a nice crown view. Anybody out there have phoenix rupicola pic/experiences. they would like to share. For scale, the fence is 4'.

There was quite a display of some lovely collectors palms on display, along with a vast amount of palms and cycads for sale. There was something there for pretty well anyone who was interested in starting a collection that’s for sure.

Here is one more than 10 years old. They grow easily here in Rome, the only problem is they do not tolerate any sun

Thanks again Leonel Mera for showing me these palm trees! Click here for complete album

Chambeyronia macrocarpa var flavopicta caught my eye.

I think this species is often overlooked in the palm community but I think when they mature and get some size, they can look really nice. This one is one of my greenhouse palms and it is about 3 feet tall. It even produces inflorescences regularly but obviously nothing comes from it.

It’s a great feeling when you harvest some seeds from a palm in your garden, and this one is no exception. Another fantastic rare palm producing seeds for future generations. I have collected seeds from this palm before with good success in germinating them. Using the baggie method with spagnum moss at 30 degrees bottom heating. A great palm for dry parts of the garden. I also used an artist brush for a couple of days to help the insects out plus a rat trap to keep the rats out getting one back on the rats. They were cleaned in about 2 minutes with a jet wash super easy for a hard seed to clean.

I echo Jonathan’s sentiment above. I don’t really understand the point in such a strong negative statement on something so subjective. I will say though that as soon as I read it I knew it would generate a lot of interest in the topic, so I suppose in some convoluted way it has contributed to the positive discussion of palms. My hot take: Palms are one of the most (the most IMO) useful, horticulturally and botanically diverse and interesting plant groups. You’ve got Elaeis which is the world’s most efficient generator of food energy to the point where it is infamous (not the palm’s fault), Cocos which in used for food, shelter and even potting mix and countless others which produce edible fruit or palm heart and countless others grown for edible fruit, palm heart, sugar, building materials etc etc. You’ve got Lodoicea for the largest seed in the world, Corypha for the largest inflorescence, Raphia the longest frond, Ceroxylon the tallest monocot…all this in a plant family that also contains species that you could accidentally step on at maturity if not careful. I’ll admit I’m a palm nut almost to the exclusion of all other plant families so I’m biased, but to me not many plant families have species which can fit so well into different landscape types; tropical style gardens, cool cloudforest, arid style gardens, large lawn landscape specimen gardens and even more formal style gardens and everything in between. Hopefully that’s enough positivity to counter anything else thrown out there in this thread 😆. I’ll just leave these photos here.

I guess you wouldn't want these in your garden then? The pointlessness of subjective criticism.

It’s a fantastic feeling when a palm you planted a lot of years ago is flowering. Finally becoming an adult palm after 24 years. Originally a purchase from Rich trapnell of rosebud farm in Kuranda. Time will tell if it sets any seeds but either way it’s pretty exciting as a palm grower when a rare palm flowers.

Hi ! a small hike in the rainforest of my island. Prestoea population doing great with many seedlings all around. I love the contrast between the white trunk and the dark crown Some are Up to 15 m I would say stepfather for scale

We are in the same boat here. I had a thread a while ago about the palm police . My insurance broker that called me last year and told me a drone was sent over my house and saw my palm collection so I was cancelled . He found someone to insure my house at a much higher rate . He told me I was lucky. Yesterday a neighbor from down the end of the street told my wife “ I don’t know how you get away with having so many palm trees around your house?” Now we have folks who are pitted against each other. Her house looks like a desert , not a plant in sight. Last year I had to trim every plant to excess just to get this new company to cover us. Then take video’s of every inch and wait to be approved. I don’t know where this will end but I fear my palm’s days are numbered. The only ones I will be able to keep will be those that are down the hill…..for now. Off topic but I am dealing with the same situation at my shop in Ventura . I have no employees , I work alone and last year my insurance (required by the building I rent) went up 58% . I will be dropped by them this year as they are no longer writing policies. The next policy will be another 100% increase! In 40 years of business I’ve never had a claim. My house …..28 years and never had a claim. Harry

Matty, if it were my Satakentia, I’d do whatever I could to transplant it to an insurance “acceptable” place in the garden. If I had to remove all the palms in close proximity to my house, I’d be losing dozens of mature ones. By the way, I have a young Satakentia in its second year in my Bay Area garden and so far so good.

So yesterday the Montgomery Botanic Garden had its annual luncheon and they showed us their 15 sprouted Palmyra Atoll coconuts that they collected last year. These are the largest coconut fruits known, and very oblong. The trees apparently are not distinctly bigger than the regular types. BTW, The folks at Montgomery had to beg the folks at the US Forestry Department to NOT cut those trees down - since they were thought to have been introduced for agriculture to the Atoll. MBG convinced them that these were obviously an endemic variety and were not the same as the agricultural one. See the attached pictures for a comparison with a regular sized. coconut.

Lemurophoenix, just an amazing palm. Tim

New Palms for the Spring Season We are ringing in the Spring season with a brand new price list, new palms for your nursery / garden, alongside our extensive list of rare and exotic species. First we have a restock of Kentiopsis piersoniorum (pictured above). This New Caledonian beauty adds a dramatic flair to any garden and is sought after, and Floribunda is one of the only places you can find it, available now as seedlings for $25.00. We continue our New Caledonian theme with Cyphophoenix nucele, a palm that has a beautiful white crownshaft and upright leaves, available in 4in size for $8.50. Basselinia glabrata is an amazing talking point in the garden, with its interesting stacked inflorescences. These are available as 1 gallon sized plants at $20.00. Hailing from São Paulo, Brazil, Lytocaryum hoehnei is endangered in the wild, but you can help preserve or distribute it to add it to more gardens and preserve this beautiful species. Seedlings available now for $4.00. Reinhardtia latisecta from Central America has amazing wide leaflets and beautiful inflorescences. A wonderful clustering understory palm for warmer climates. All this and more are on our new price list, enter (N) into the search to filter out the new items, but don't forget to explore the rest of the list for old favorites! We also have the trunking cycad Lepidozamia hopeii available in our cycad section! https://floribunda.xyz/pricelist

Waggy planted where mule was. Couldn't take seeing the empty dirt spot any longer! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HMSAP001GTw

Seeds galore!!! I bought the above palm as “Malcomberi hybrid” but as it’s matured and now set seed I think it’s Chrysalidocarpus Prestonianus, which is fine with me. Below is the first ripening seed on my Robusta Hybrid. I had a Robusta hybrid in my previous Hilo garden and these seed are about double the size of that one. I’ll try to germinate some and see what happens. And below are the first flower spathes pushing out on my Burretiokentia Koghiensis. Not even trunking yet and pushing flowers?

Post Script: Hilo Hero Tackles Tall Tassie Timber... Tim vs Eucalyptus regnans, Tall Trees Forest Reserve, Styx Valley, Tasmania.

Ever since I got into Palm trees at the age of 13, I've wanted to see these ridiculously tall, skinny, curvy palms twisting above turquoise water in person! Over 20 years later, I finally got the chance to do it! This is south of Barrera in the Dominican Republic. Click here for complete collection of photos

Sorry didn’t attach the pictures.

We went on a trek to Cape Tainaro which I think is the southernmost tip of continental Europe. Beautiful place and some nice flowers. Euphorbias are in their best right now. Enjoy!

About the only cyclone damage I had was a Joey palm washed away I planted a couple of weeks ago in a gully. All was not lost just picked the little fella up and repotted him. I got away with Alfred pretty good in comparison to some places.

The first is Chambeyronia macrocarpa the second is I wish I knew it’s a beautiful poem, but I don’t remember which one it is. the third Kentiopsis oliviformis the fourth Pseudophoenix vinifera the fifth Hyophorbe verschaffeltii like many here I have quite a few different palms I haven’t grown as many as Eric from Orlando,I’m sure, but I have grown quite a few different palms in my life and still enjoy growing more IMG_6011.mov

A visit to Brisbane botanical gardens. Quite an impressive garden with a lot of age with the plants on display throughout the garden. They certainly have there work cut out for them with this garden. It’s absolutely gorgeous. With some very large mature palms.

The annual pacsoa show is on this weekend and the buy of the week is this Itaya amicorum. What a gorgeous looking palm never heard of it but I have now. Hopefully it will take the cold you just never know until you try.

Here it is. About 30 feet (10 M ) overall.

Bought another Butia Odorata. Home Depot couldn't find the palm in their system. It was priced for 70 dollars. Got it for 25 dollars hahaha. What a lucky day.

This first picture is how I had my palms lit up in the backyard before I read that I could use LED string lights on my main low voltage landscape wire that goes throughout the backyard . Below is picture with string lights but these are incandescent lights protecting my Washy trunk . I recently got down to 21F , and wouldn't need Washy protection with that Low , but in January I got down to 14F and I like to protect that Washy below 16F : Below are pictures of my palms during the day . Birmingham : Here are the LED lights that come on at dark and go off after 6 hours or whatever length of time I set them to stay on till . I got a little snow . I can handle this kind of snow , that doesn't bend down my petioles and mess up the look of my palms : My Washy nice and toasty under those blankets as seen before :

My oliviformis is just starting to take off, after being in the ground for 23 years under a lot of neglect and dry times, ever since I started paying attention to it around a year ago it’s definitely starting to give a reward for all the attention and water. Just goes to show a little irrigation makes all the difference in dry situations.

Very happy with the growth of this so quickly. Its in central Florida and appears very healthy to me.

Looks like my Ravenea julietiae is more of a Ravenea julio....male, not female.

New Braunfels canary island date palms today.

Some photos of my favorites along with some honorable mentions. Chrysalidocarpus Prestonianus Hybrid: C. Robustus Hybrid: C. Hovomantsina Hybrid: Honorable mentions: Clinostigma Ponapense: Oenocarpus Distichus: Orania Trispatha: Chrysalidocarpus Lutescens Solitary / Golden form:

I chose to not post on my “So Far so Good” thread anymore because it was getting too long. Anyways I can finally start taking the covers off the plants since the temperatures are getting a little milder. Needle Palm is undamaged as usual. Cycad is brown, but alive! There’s still some green on the base of the fronds. Sabal Louisiana lost two leaves, and seems moderately cold damaged. Cant really assess any damage until I can permanently take the burlap off, but so far I’ve seen only tip damage, and the spears look healthy!