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Drove around my neighborhood and the other coconut I follow in Belle Isle. Royals and Arecas got hit hard. Homes nearest the water and maybe a more South explore have light damage to Adonidia and Foxtails. Majesty palm looks good too. The coconut looks like mine but has 1 fully green frond. Interesting.

It can be salvaged, a smaller pot as Jonathan suggested, to do that tip the palm on the ground, hose the soil away, trim dead leaves off, repot with a good quality potting mix. Place your palm in a place out of sun in a nice quiet corner of your garden. Dont fertiliser the palm, it looks like you have over fertilised your palm along with overwatering. Ending up with a heap of soil problems locking up your soil with no air in it has not helped your palm. Phoenix palms are quite tough I suggest set and forget your palm in that nice spot in the garden keep an eye on it for a little bit of water in summer and in about a years time you’ll see some recovery in your palm!

My guess is it's water logged - looks to be in a pretty big pot for a smallish palm, and the leaf browning looks like water damage. I'd probably down size the pot and hope for the best.

Further up A1A, Paradise Beach park https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KFLINDIA326/graph/2026-02-2/2026-02-2/daily 1/31 34.3 2/1 26.2 2/2 32.7 2/3 35.4 Sea Hibiscus (Hibiscus tiliaceus) Coconuts are cooked, even on the beach Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera), I never thought I'd see them like that on our beaches. Spiny Fiddlewood (Citharexylum spinosum) last picture are sea grapes facing the beach

Well they can come and weed out my archontophoenix palms on there way to Nimbin (an old hippie town that started from the Aquarius festival back in the 70s) if they like, next time there on holidays from the good old US of A. I don’t mind some volunteers, I have a lot of rocks I can’t plant in and the volunteers pop up in the rock cracks they are welcome to stay there.

Once the canopy is up there that’s when the fun begins, good to see a man with his priorities in the right order, palms first👍

If anyone's looking for a good Youtube video to watch here's one. I really enjoyed this one! there's great scenery of palms in the video

Hey I was supposed to do this 3 months ago. The 2 foot Boost Lighting $25 deals on eBay KILL the 4 footers. The Wal Mart shop lights are actually wonderful. After doubling up my Barrina tubes I must have done something right because the bananas are gonna hit the ceiling, I just kinda hung them in a V pattern - I zip tied them in pairs and hung them from S hooks and chains. Mentioning this again, especially for the price point, the Wal Mart shop lights are wonderful - if you're not looking to fruit or flower, grab them. I also just snagged these. First and foremost, I want to say I do not like The Millennial Gardener. Something about him just... Just stop pretending you're poor and on a budget. You're not bootstrapping anything. Anyway, he was right about these lights. https://a.co/d/0gVKcpKn I wanted something to fill out my new bench, it's 87.5"w (I'm using repurposed shelving so I get weird sizes) and I already hung a Wal Mart shop light dead center so a couple of 2 footers on either side of that should do great. Then I busted out the Photone app and holy poop on a stick From 6" I got like 500ppfd. The 4 pack is $30 if you have Prime, I didn't need the timer since I bought smart outlets for all my lights. 500 ppfd for under $8 is insane. That's the same number I get from my doubled up Barrina with the shower curtain reflector (which believe it or not made a HUGE difference) - and the 6 pack of those is typically $130. The power cords are a little short but I'll just Mississippi something together. I'm gonna have some very happy plants over here.

Kind of a nifty diminutive palm, although I don’t think it’s particularly cold hardy. Nice deep red crown shaft and colorful seeds. The mother plant is posing with the shovel, while the offspring are growing nearby. Tim

I suspected this would be the case... I'm in the Orlando area and we haven't seen temperatures like this in at least 40 years. I wonder if any of the coconut palms further South on A-1-A directly on the ocean survived. I was over there back in August and we drove down to JB's Fish Camp. And on the drive down there I saw lots of coconut palms, many looked like they had been there for a number of years. So, perhaps some of them directly on the ocean survived.

Here's empirical evidence that shows planting on the south facing side of a large building, blocking the cold winds of an advective freeze event, is a sound strategy. These palms were much less damaged then their nearby counterparts. In the second photo with the Flamboyant (Delonix regia), at the bottom right, is a volunteer royal with no damage at all, and that wall protected it from those freezing winds.

The mango trees are defoliated. I don't know how bad these are set back. Some of these trees in the old downtown part are pretty old, like the size of laurel oaks. In residential areas where the trees might be around 30 years old, are in the same damaged condition.

Next stop, downtown Melbourne. Closest weather station reported the following: 1/31 33.3 2/1 26.0 2/2 28.3 2/3 32.6 2010 coconut survivors. I'm not sure if they will pull through this time.

I’m a zone pusher for sure. Brought in all I could. Bottles, coconuts, bunch of juveniles in pots. The rest had to fend. All my understory tropicals got hammered. Figs, bananas, citrus, coconuts, mangos, etc. not worried about the unders. Bamboo was fine, locals fine, livistonioa fine, Bismarck a little tattered by wind but otherwise fine .most worried about about royals and adonidia. Adonidias are about as big as ive seen around here.

In League City TX, just south of Houston. We had one night at 25 and the next bottomed out at at 23.5. It did get above freezing in between. Mule unprotected Majesty that I defoliated and wrapped with blankets and heat. Too easy to protect to risk losing it. L. Chinensis (unprotected) and Acoelorrhaphe Wrightii (blanket and Xmas lights) C. Alba just got a blanket (had lights on it but they didn't work!) and the Arenga Englerii had no protection. Another Chinensis behind that. Decora unprotected Bizzy unprotected Chamadorea Hooperiana (I think?) just had a pot flipped over it What I thought was Seifrizii but got absolutely toasted with canopy Cham Costaricana that just got a blanket. I may have overestimated it's cold tolerance Licuala Spinosa strap leaf just got a pot flipped over it A small Cham Radicalis and some transplant Rhapis did fine Chuniopheonix Nana had a pot flipped over it with a string of Xmas lights laying next to it Licuala Fordiana? Lanonia? I have to keep better records. Had a pot with some Xmas lights next to it. Cham Elegans unprotected A Cham Tepejilote that I decided would be easier to just dig up and replant after the freeze. Doesn't seem to have missed a beat. And last but not least, a potted Ptychosperma Elegans that I somehow missed when I loaded up the greenhouse. May he rest in peace.

NOTE: In the temperature ranges below, the lower temperature in ranges typically comes from an Ambient Weather model and the higher temperatures come from a fan-aspirated Davis Vantage Pro 2. If there is no range, both stations were within a degree of each other. If you own an Ambient Weather station, know that the low temperature will be slightly depressed most nights compared to the DVP2. For a full write-up on the comparisons between these models: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/76970-weather-station-experiments-and-brand-comparisons/ Overall Winter Synopsis (thus far): This cold season started early and didn't disappoint people who love cold snaps. The first cold snap on 11/11/2025 brought the yard almost uniformly down to 36F. This was a full 8F lower than the previous daily record low of 44F here. 11/12/2025 followed with 38F-39F here. December 31st finished off 2025 with a bang as the temperature dropped to 34F-36F in various areas of the yard. Most of January was up and down, with cold events within typical norms frequently interrupting warm periods. The low for the month in the garden was 31F on 01/16/2026. The garden recorded a daily record high of 86F on 01/25/2026, while the airport crushed the previous record high by recording 88F on the same day. The cool-off came swiftly, with multiple nights in the 30s leading up to the February cold blast on 02/01/2026 that brought 24F with 13MPH wind gusts. This event was followed with consecutive nights of 26F-28F, 30F-31F, 38F-39F, 42F-43F, 34F-35F in the garden. The stats below summarize this section, using the DVP2 numbers for the garden temperature: Thus far, most coconuts and crownshaft palms look like they were hit with a blowtorch. Especially affected have been Archontophoenix alexandrae and Dictyosperma album 'conjugatum'. Most Adonidia merrillii, Wodyetia bifurcata, various species of Veitchia (arecina, joannis, winin), Beccariophoenix fenestralis, Roystonea regia, Ptychosperma elegans, Pritchardia thurstonii, Chrysalidocarpus prestonianus, Carpoxylon macrospermum, Hyophorbe (Bottle + Spindle), Caryota mitis, Chambeyronia (macrocarpa, oliviformis, various forms) and Satakentia liukiuensis are heavily damaged to defoliated (80%-100%). It's likely that any Adenium (Desert Rose) left outdoors is dead. More moderate damage (40%-60%) has appeared on Phoenix roebelenii, Beccariophoenix alfredii (some are undamaged), Latania lontaroides, Carpentaria acuminata, various former Dypsis (Chrysalidocarpus decaryi, lutescens, lanceolata, cabadae, pembanus, letptocheilos), Ptychosperma macarthurii, Syagrus schizophylla, Saribus rotundifolius, Cryosophila warscewiczii, Encephalartos ferox, and 2 x Thrinax radiata where the fans face the wind. Light damage has shown up on Howea forsteriana and Hyphaene coriacea in a few spots. No damage has appeared thus far on Coccothrinax argentata, Leucothrinax morrisii, Pseudophoenix sargentii (some in town do show damage), 1 x Thrinax radiata with fronds parallel to the wind, Chrysalidocarpus decipiens, Kerriodoxa elegans, Zamia furfuracea, Zamia integrifolia, any Livistona (decora, chinensis, saribus, muelleri, australis), Arenga engleri, Copernicia (alba or fallaensis) or pineapples. Medemia argun has no cold damage in the ground or in a pot, but they have other issues here. The typical bulletproof palm genera ( Sabal, Serenoa, Acoelorraphe, Chamaedorea, Chamaerops, Butia, Brahea, Syagrus, Phoenix, Rhapis, Rhapidophyllum, and Washingtonia) had no issues, either. This is why many of these were the backbone of gardens before Lethal Bronzing. Silver Buttonwood appears unaffected at this point. Trachycarpus is fine through this event, but is difficult for most areas to grow. My potted plants were placed in a cage near the Atlantic tall coconut bed and suffered no cold losses as they were completely shielded from wind by a cement wall and plants in all directions. As far as hardwoods, it looks like all of my tropical hardwoods will defoliate, but the branches feel solid. This includes: Ficus aurea, Delonix regia, Bursera simaruba, Mange (Glen), Avocado (Choquette), Coccoloba uvifera (Sea Grape). Philodendrons were laying flat on the coldest morning, but perked back up in front of the house. A few neighbors weren't so lucky. Their plants look like spinach. Crotons and Ti will likely defoliate, minus a few branches that were low enough to stay safe from wind. This cannot be considered a final report. The full extent of the damage won't be known for a significant amount of time. My hope is that everyone's favorites will recover and the rest of this winter won't be as terrible. That said, I have heard rumor that another similar outbreak is expected sometime in late February or early March. For now, a few positive photos: Areca vestiaria survived at Hollis since it is small and surrounded by really tough cycads. The former Lytocarium - now Syagrus weddelliana - did really well If the tree trimmers let it alone, the Satakentia near the parking garage should make it. A few of my coconuts show growth for now.

Tricky situation you’re palm is in, they are very temperamental mapu and root sensitivity is extremely important, dont break them or tease them apart to much. Overwatering and stagnet Stale soil is the problem no oxygen in the soil. I have gotten a few mapu from the growers up north sent to me, and they are all in a scoria rock mix almost a succulent mix only larger rock based. If it was my palm I would remove from the pot and gently hose away the soil on a cool day. Then my medium would be coco coir perlite about 50/50 with a handful of good quality potting mix and even a bit of crushed up larva pebbles from hydroponic shops. In Australia I would use a crushed up rock we call blue metal or crusher dust it gis called. Place the palm in a shaded place with humidity and instead of sitting in a tray of water I would put rocks in the tray of water and then place the palm on top of the rocks with just about half a centimetre of container in the water in among the rocks. It’s a tender palm mapu. You have a sick little baby and it needs TLC but not fussing over, dont fertilise your palm either let it recover.

Cuttings. Very easy ( typically root within a couple weeks ) esp. w/ some heat. Can be rooted in soil or a glass of water. ..Can be propagated by seed also ( looks like dust ) but it isn't always produced. Amaranth Family plant, so flowers produced aren't all that interesting and are usually removed.

I do believe the sailors called it smoking the rope in those days! You can give me a cuppa tea and some scones on the deck after a bit of gardening! Richard

Thanks! How do you propagate it?

Thinking Iresine herbstii, Bloodleaf..

Nice video on a proper Texas jungle. It’s only the first 9 minutes. It doesn’t focus as much on the Sabals but they are shown.

That was a pretty cool story. So is extreme southeast Texas more desert-like? I wonder what the tallest palms were in the video, washies?

Lol that's pretty funny. He's one of my favorite Youtubers I love watch People who make videos like this!

That's funny you posted this. I literally just got done watching it 10 minutes ago. Peter has an awesome channel. Gives me insights to places I may never go.

I encounter this in my work. Couple choices : -remove rock once a year and apply a 360day quality fertilizer below -trunk injected micronutrient blend like PalmJet product. Best done in cooler months like March then again October.

Images of Dallas zone 8a, unprotected palms in 2021 with a winter low of 3F and in 2026 when the low was 15°F sabal palmetto Lisa sabal Louisiana Washingtonia filifera

High school huh? I started my last year of high school in 1976, 50 years ago. At the risk of going way off topic, back in the first decade of the 2000's I ran my hobby nursery for a few years before the district decided it wanted permits, certificates and property rezoning. Here's a couple of pics from back then.

Very similar to scenes around PSL. If you had Queens, Sabals, Washies, Roebeliniis, Thatch, Livistona, Sylvesters, Date Palms, Reticulata along with a Ligustrum Hedge you'd be golden round these parts. Just about everything else...not so much. ...and the mangoes, of which some had flowered early this year, got hit really hard. It would seem that most will pull through, but this was pretty unprecedented here, so only time will tell. They look BAD.

Heptapleurum actinophyllum

This is what people's landscaping looks like in Brevard as of today.

Typical sad royals you'll see a lot of throughout downtown. Not well taken care of and embarrassing. This freeze could be the final nail in the coffin for these sickly royals

Well thankfully most of my current collection fared quite nicely. After the last freeze a couple years ago I decided to move more towards what I knew would survive. Some were still questionable, and the ones I could get in the greenhouse went in there and the others were left to elements with little to no protection. Recorded low was 23F for my location in Jacksonville. Beccariophoenix alfredii inground and potted bronzed Cycas chamaoensis, balansae, petrae and sp. Wiliwiak bronzed Syagrus cearensis (was actually hit when we had 30f a few weeks ago) these were in greenhouse Syagrus schizophylla slightly bronzed. These were covered but no heat. Caryota maxima Himalaya bronzed Butia archerii, both potted and in ground, no damage Syagrus weddellianum no damage, planted under the canopy of a mule Syagrus campylospatha in ground, no damage Mule seedlings no damage Parajubaea torallyii no damage What eas given to me as Arenga Engleri no damage, under canopy of a Queen, mule and some bamboo Syagrus hoehnei no damage

Next stop, Indialantic: closest weather station here https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KFLINDIA359/graph/2026-02-2/2026-02-2/daily 1/31 34.9 2/1 26.8 2/2 31.8 2/3 40.1 Coconuts

Wow it's become such a beautiful, tall palm. Reminds me of ones I saw in Honolulu on Waikiki beach. Will be interesting to see if it can make it. Am also interested to see how the ones at Volcano Bay at Universal Studios do.

I have some bad news. No surprise these palms I previously posted suffered from the freeze. See updated photos from today, all of the tropicals in the nearby neighborhoods are fried

you can look into what all the tropical anthurium and orchid people use for their soil. Also i believe some people use tree fern substrate with orchid bark and either some organic substrate in there or nutricote for more tropical forest plantae. if you're in cali, look into black volcano rock or pumice too!

One would need a place to store said dug up Ensete. I have enough potted things taking up valuable space. Personally, I don't find it to be any bother at all.

Call me crazy but I’m going to plant some Hesperaloe and Yuccas. Oh so tender.🤣

In regards to archontophoenix alexandrae vs Cunninghamiana, I had the same experience. Cunninghamiana looks like it has almost no damage, while alexandrae are 100% fried and brown.

I want to hear everyone’s opinion. I have these 3 Washingtonias that I planted in the spring and our loving their new homes in the ground with their mulch and lava rock insulation. I want to hear all opinions, I will send $1 to each person on Cash App that was right once spring comes back around. For a little bit of extra information they all survived a 29F night while still potted in February. The first one took no damage at all and the second two had very very slight browning damage that was all trimmed away and bounced right back. I live in Augusta, GA- Grovetown to be exact.

Jonathan, these little guys aren’t uncommon in local gardens, but still you don’t see a lot of them. They seed regularly and are easy to germinate. Tim

North central Florida has a long and rich history of recurrent extreme cold snaps. Take Volusia county as an example. Extreme freezes were recorded back quite a ways : Jan. 2nd 1766 -- The ground was frozen to an inch in depth along the St. John River. This wiped out the entire citrus crop in the area. Feb. 8th 1835 -- The St. John River froze 50+ feet out from the shores as the temp went into the single digits. Ocala (Ft. King then) hit 11 degrees. Fruit trees were wiped out from South Carolina and Georgia southwards. It was said that fruit trees were "destroyed, roots and all" as far south as the 28th parallel, which would include Tampa Bay on the west coast and Cape Canaveral on the east coast. Again they got hit in 1857 and 1866. The 1870s were pretty rough. with a severe freezes in 1873, 1876, 19879, and 1880. 1886 is another notable freeze. The temps dipped into the teens. 1894 - 1895 was the next big freeze. And again in 1898 where it dropped from 78 degrees to 18 degrees with freezes for 4 straight days. Then there was a 17 year stretch before the next weak freeze of 1916. After that it was mild but some hard freezes in 1962, 1983, and 1985, and of course 1989. That's 200 years worth of heavy impact freezing which repeatedly set back the citrus industry in the area. Spoken communications (recorded in Spaniard documents) with the Seminole Indian tribe, when the Spaniards kicked off planting citrus into north Florida, records a few instances where the indians were perplexed that the spaniards were attempting to plant those crops in the area. This indicates that recurrent cold snaps have been known by the indians to be very routine in the likely hundreds of years prior to the 1700s. Going into the future : Florida is geographically south of an area that has an abundance of cold air (Canada and the arctic above that). The Appalachians is the only physical barrier to cold air heading south. It's a better barrier than we have in Texas as the only barrier to our north is barbed-wire fences and that does nothing. Northern florida is not as protected by water as southern florida is, and it sits several degree further north. Climatologically it sits within the outer envelope of the long Gaussian cold tail (as do all the states that border the Gulf of Mexico). Deep south FL is in the short non-Gaussian cold tail and would require an extreme event and an abormal setup where low level blocking occurs just to the east of florida and cold air advection comes almost straight south down the center of the state and pools. Basically this climatology will not change much over time. A warmer earth will not eradicate extreme cold snaps, unless and until it could melt the poles and Greenland. I would continue to expect periodic deep freezes with temperatures similar to recent history (since the end of the little ice age). Maybe the periodicity changes as large scale processes such as ENSO and PDO continue to oscillate back and forth. Yes, those are in the Pacific ocean but they affect circulation thousands of miles downstream. This past year PDO has been the deepest negative it's ever been and is likely to flip in the next decade or so. With it, ENSO will likely go back to a state where El Nino events are seen more frequently. But, until the Polar areas completely melt away; not likely in the next few generations of humans, then the threat of cold snaps will continue. Ok, I will step off away from the keyboard now .... I originally planned to only reply about the past freeze events, but my history as meteorologist kicked in. -Matt

From Sunday, 1 February 2026. We had 3.5" of fluffy snow - no heavy ice or sleet. The lowest low was around 17F briefly and we made it way above freezing every day during this winter insult. The cycads will have to be defoliated which is not an issue. They'll recover quickly and the defoliation will remove a lot of scale.

I'm in South Florida zone 10b. I wrapped up a few in-ground palms Adonidia dransfeldii Caryota ophiopellis Cyrtostachys renda (plus space heater) Tribear seed rack Plus Chrysalidocarpus basilongus in 25gal pot and brought all my potted palms into my garage with my mini split on HEAT mode set at 76deg, grow lights, fans, water puddle on floor for humidity. My weather station on my roof said 36deg F this morning for about an hour. They're calling for 37deg tomorrow. Then we warm up JD

Who knows, recovery stories are always part of these type of topics.

I guess when I go out there again I'll test the PPFD of the new 4 foot Boost/Dymond/DynaGro lights (all brands are the same thing) but I gotta say just looking at the mounting attachment I'm happy. There's a little flip out clip for your S hooks. That alone in and of itself makes me very happy. And the price was right. I'll do another video when I mount them too. Maybe I can bribe my brother to hold the camera so y'all can watch me sweat and listen to me swear while every measurement I take is off by like just enough to piss me off and bother me. I think at the price point, if you're overwintering enough stuff these might actually be a viable alternative to shop lights unless you're already in the market for shop lights.

I thought it survived if I mber correctly. Mine is in absolute beast mode right now. Mine did well in a pot but grew out of pot sizes pretty quick. T J