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Unless the Royal is really small, they seem to be pretty tough. There are a bunch around the Sanford area that survived many years of frosts in the upper 20s and at least one ~25F and all survived. The only thing that finally killed a big batch of them was a chainsaw during construction of a new business complex... I've seen some completely defoliated and grow right back literally a couple of weeks later. It is already sub-40 here with not too high winds but occasional huge gusts. I went around today and took about 210 photos of the yard and all the plants. Most things I did not attempt to cover, being either too big to try, or already known to be really tough, or already burnt to a crisp from previous 27-30F frosts this winter. I did put boxes over 2 small Coryphas, my grown-from-seed Arenga Westerhoutii, a couple of small Arenga Hookeriana, and a couple of Philodendron "Evansii". I moved my small nursery area into the garage on top of a single folding table. I just remembered that I was going to cover a small Attalea Butyracea and Phalerata though...time to get out there before having dinner! Darwin's gonna sort it all out, right @kinzyjr?

That 100 on there looks good right about now lol.

This is how we garden in South Texas. lol

I did have one encouraging thought...generally my house is 2 to 5F colder than the airport. But that's only on still nights. On previous windy cold fronts my house was pretty close to the airport, i.e. within 1 or 2 degrees. So I was assuming 25 at the airport = 20-23F here. But with the wind maybe that really means I'll end up near 25. Almost everything here already survived that with frost, so hopefully it'll all survive 25ish with wind! I suppose I'll find out in a few hours...

We just published a new 2026 research update on lethal bronzing that explains what may actually be happening inside the palm — something that hasn’t been formally published before. Not a cure, but real progress. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18027736

100%. If you zoom in, the HRRR is showing ~31-32° on the barrier islands. Whatever algorithm that pics up the city temps tends to be +/- 2° from what I can tell.

While we bundle up for the next two cold nights, with flurries coming down in the Panhandle, I thought I’d throw us back to Florida State University (Tallahassee) from this time last January. It was the most surreal, fever dream-like couple of days in the 8 years I’ve lived in North Florida, but thankfully I had my snow gear from a trip to Appalachia a few weeks earlier. I wish I had kept more accurate records of cold damage to marginal species around here (as I had done in 2022/3 after a dry trip to 19F at TLH), but in my honest opinion, the snow acted as an insulator and the damage was not as bad as I had expected. TLH weather station bottomed out at 22F on the 23rd. Torn between summer and winter? Just cross the street! Lots of scenes like this in the thawing days. well played … well played ……

Oh absolutely. Plants are easy to dig out for the most part but I was mostly referring to palm trees. Digging out a 30 foot tall Washie requires more than just a pair of gloves, a shovel and a six pack of beer. Ask people what it costs to remove mature palm trees . Something that every palm grower needs to understand including myself because it isn't always the cold that kills a palm. Diseases are also a real concern . But yes , you only live once lol.

My students and I have been landscaping our school for 40 years and we have a long-tested collection of Sabal palms. I thought that people in zone 8* would be interested in what can be grown long term. The coldest temps these palms have experienced is low teens. I will add more pics if people are interested. The list: S. causiarum, S. minor, S. tamaulipensis, S. rosei, S. x texensis, S. uresana (green and silver), S. pumos, S. bermudana, S. mexicana, S. etonia, S. palmetto Lisa. (4 years old). Added last summer: S. blackburniana, S. miamiensis. In our area, S. palmetto reseeds like crazy. S. minor is native and common in low lying areas. Rhapidophyllum and Serenoa are native about 1 hour south of town. Pictures in order top to bottom: S. causiarum, S. uresana (silver), S. tamaulipensis, S. Lisa, S. Riverside, S. palmetto

HRRR (18z) seems to show a ‘worst case’ scenario with model runs materially cooler than the NWS prediction for both tomorrow and Monday AM. As always, go with the professionals, but will be interesting to see how certain models perform. Good luck, everyone.

Most of the year it is. Thankfully the freezes are short lived - usually less than 8 hours and rarely multiple times in a winter. We've only been below 40°F three nights this winter with the one freeze. But it only takes one extreme event to wreak havoc.

You read my mind. This is going to be historic for east Florida. If the forecast holds, it will break all time records for the coldest temperatures on the space and treasure coasts for the month of February. Just wrapped up my coconut palm and my Dypsis baronii. I'm using a heated blanket to cover the heart of my coconut palm and Christmas lights and blankets to cover the cores as much as I can.

Best of luck to you. There's a Fiji Dwarf in Harlingen, Texas that I have defoliated and wrapped with a canvas painter's tarp each of the last 4 years hitting 27°F each year. So far so good. Here's pics from last winter.

PLEASE don't export them to Arizona...🤦 Most of the big box stores and Moon valley stocks come from So CAL... When crossing the border headed west between Arizona and California, there is a no negotiation border check point entering California. Used to be in Arizona laws too, but not anymore... 5,4,3,2,1 💥 aztropic Mesa, Arizona

So I know that you were not happy with me and my comments before but this is exactly what I was trying to convey. I was not trying to hurt your feelings or be unsupportive of your ventures. I was simply advising you of the harsh reality of nature. Nature does not care what mankind has described a region to be or that a general trend of warm temperatures is a sign of some sort of absolute minimum temperature. This type of thing happens and will continue to happen. I have (as well as many others) seen this occur several times in my lifetime and have come to the realization that Florida is not immune to intense arctic cold fronts, especially at the worst possible time. Planting tropical palm trees in Florida is always a risk as is any zone pushing. If you want to grow coconuts and similar palms, that’s great but they will never be viable long term in North Florida. And as you can see, even Central Florida is not a sure thing. At this point, there are people in South Florida who are worried because they have super tropical stuff like Areca Vestiaria and Cyrtostachys Renda in the ground. So they have been zone pushing too and it had been working out due to the moderate winters. But it had risk all along just like growing Coconuts and Adonidia in Jacksonville. Wrap your plants, add lights, move what you can indoors and hope for the best. But if your plants die, you will always be able to replace them. It just depends on whether you want to continue spending money on temporary plants.

There will be damage but I bet most will recover.

HI All, long time lurker, first time poster. Thought I'd post some new growth to keep you going through your quiet season. Cycas Thouarsii Emerging leaf on a Ferox I removed the old leaves when the new leaves started flushing on this Lehmanii as they were 3 seasons old and a bit shabby. Plant had coned 3 seasons in a row and only put flushes on puppies which I removed this past winter. More puppies already showing again can be seen on the caudex. Cycas Petraea coming along.

Yep. I have a friend in NC and it's 12"+ and STILL snowing. I'm sure they are not equipped for that kind of snow.

In an effort to see how much cold these spawns of satan can handle I devised a very scientific experiment to preform in them. I caught 3 South American palm weevils put them each in a tube and placed one in my freezer at 0f, one in my refrigerator at 35f and one in a cooler with ice and salt and was able to hold the temperature between 26-28f. Here are the results… freezer at 0f for 1 hour (dead) refrigerator at 35f for 12 hours (alive) 40 hours (alive) salt / ice at 26-28f for 12 hours (alive) 40 hours (still alive) not a great outcome being that those temps would do a bunch of damage on its own.

Looks like the freezing line is just north of Ocala at this point.

Size really matters. That's a big TRi bear; hard to believe a (hopefully) short event could take it down. In 2007 we had a brutal low 20's event that lasted about 5 days. (Nightime temps). I lost lots of small stuff, but nothing established . Best of luck, I know it's stressful..

Chamaedorea microspadix with bases protected. I know it looks kind of thrown together but I put pinestraw thickly at the base and then towels and blankets on top. Seems to have worked the last couple years we had teens. The plants under the buckets are Cordyline australis ‘red star.’ Hunting tent over my Philodendron selloum. I wrapped the bud/base with a heavy moving blanket underneath that. By some miracle the trunk survived 15deg and almost 6inches of snow last January with just two heavy moving blankets wrapped tightly around the bud/trunk.

You got to have something to go by though. Obviously some plants aren't hardy for a given area, so how else do you delineate that when plant shopping? Having said that , I do agree with a lot of what you say.

The hardiness zone map is not useful for gardener. I don't even know why so many people hold on to it while it's so obvious that no plant cares about average temperature . I always give people the advice to check their ultimate low temperatures of the last 100 years because that allows you to see how many record breaking low temperatures occurred and how often as well. Gardening is a learning process and everyone is different. Some take the chance to zone push palms for as long as possible but at the end of the day whatever survives is what's been growing for many many decades and not just 1 to 40 years. But I think it's absolutely OK to zone push . Me, I personally don't want to deal with the protection drama only to squeeze out some more years.

32 deg at 4:45pm here 🥶 winds still HOWLING. I used a small hunting tent to put over my Philodendron selloum so I don’t lose the stem. It’s blown off more than once during the day- finally rigged up something that is holding. How windy is it in central FL at this time for you all? I have to tell myself that things will survive since my yard already endured this in the Christmas 2022 freeze (that one maybe being a little worse). That one had the terrible winds along with hard freezing temps like this one. Somehow most of my Chamaeodorea microspadix didn’t lose their stems in that one but they did lose most of their fronds. I protected the base of them since I don’t have time/resources to cover each clump which are 4+ feet tall. So in the worst case it can resprout from the offshoots.

Had a high of 35F today, wind chills remained in the low to mid 20s all day as winds have been gusting in the 35-45 mph range. As of 4:45 PM CST, the temperature is already just barely below freezing at 31.5F. Hoping for a very very gradual drop through the night. Current forecast is 20F. Hopefully the cold air advection isnt as strong as anticipated. Stay warm out there tonight, and hopefully everyone's palms will make it out alive.

Snow flurries coming down in Tallahassee, I’m told. On my way back from Orlando, which has been giving much grayer, duller vibes than I’m used to. Hang in there, everyone! The wind is gonna do a number.

I offer a 15 gallon, well grown palm, it is about four inches diameter at the base and needs ground planting. This is considered to be the easiest New Caledonia palm for coastal California. There is even a lonely one living almost feral at the Lakeside Palmetum in Oakland. $165 at my garden, or $200 delivered, ( immediate Bay Area, like Novato to Concord to San Jose) Cash or PayPal, thanks https://www.palmpedia.net/palmsforcal/Burretiokentia_hapala

Lepidozamia hopei

Foxtails are absolutely hardier than royals. In last year's 28F event here in Brownsville, every royal had substantial leaf damage. None were killed (that I'm aware of) including smaller ones, but no Foxtails in the immediate vicinity except the very small ones had any damage at all.

This is what everyone being in the same boat looks like when the boat is called The Titanic:

Why does everything east of the Rockies typically trend colder? Why do the initial extremely cold forecasts always back down from extent of the cold only to go back down in temps forecasting as the events unfold? Don’t the forecasters build this into their forecasting?

What’s the lowest low anyone has ever pushed a tribear?

I am enjoying the ongoing tour of palms in Hong Kong.

Dallas zone 8a palms in January 2020 before 3F and 135 consecutive hours below freezing.

Ok let me please share an impression regarding the very similar rpw. I think that its activity and/or reproduction rate decreases considerably with increased air moisture combined with high temps. I have witnessed countless times palms growing side by side one exposed to full sun and the other under canopy and former being infested and killed, while latter was remaining at laest seemingly healthy. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that tropics are still full of palms.

Isaac Dawley home in Santa Paula. House and Palms still standing or they where when my grandmother showed me where it was. She was born there but it has long since been someone else’s farm.

Found this on that street in Santa Paula which probably is the wrong street number but those Phoenix canariensis would be about the same age as the ones in your black and white photo.

Correct, I did not need a small lot permit.

Small buckets o’ seeds continue to drop…..

Snow covered trachycarpus fortunei

Ravenea glauca shining in summer!

A bit of colour on the new sallaca leaf, and a nice pic of the garden git my attention!

Adventitious roots on C. costaricana and T. fortunei lending a bit of tropical flair to our cool-weather garden

Chambeyronia divaricarta. Tim

Archontophoenix purperea not as bright as some I have seen, but purperea nonetheless!

The One-Armed Bandit has couple of flower stalks are in full bloom now, and they attract a hoard of pollinating bees and flies. I assume some good seeds will come of this. Four big stalks are in progress. The neighbor cut down a big tree, so Charlie Brown is now getting the most potential sun for his spot, pretty much anll day now, and rotting leaf drop is minimized in the crown and boots. The babies in the center are growing well, with regular Sargentiis outpacing the single faster variant for some reason. I got necrotic tips on all of the Sargentii over the past year-plus. No yellowing except on the fast variant. In the end, I think it is potassium deficiency some how. I’d bet the limestone layer is to blame in some way. After trying various things, I settled on the potassium issue causing the necrosis, (it can do this without yellowing in some palms - and potassium deficiency is rare in these) and they did seem to respond to a couple of rounds of heavy potash fertilization. The younger leaves are holding up and looking better. I’ll keep documenting the flower to seed progress, in case anyone is interested in the time frame and progression.

The One Armed Bandit, shot a stalk out of one of its now three flower spathes rather suddenly, and it popped open. I wonder if I’ll be able to harvest some seeds from this one. I guess we’ll find out over time. Would be nice to grow some of these up from seed.

Now this next part is where I may or may not have gone really wrong. The weekend came to an end and we had to get back to the city. So I bundled up all the seeds, took them home with me, put the drying ones on the picnic table out back and the soaking ones back into water, and left everything for 5 days (changing the water twice though after work). The weekend came again. I went shopping for implements to mechanize the tasks still ahead. I bought a grinder wheel that I'd seen used in some Palmtalk snaps, a badass wire brush, and a new bucket. Along with some home-grown implements, these are what I proceeded to "try" to peel my seeds with. First, the grinder wheel. It spun really nicely, and with the drill extension, I was able to get right into my new blue bucket. Unfortunately, the fruit of Butia seeds, I've just learned, are wrapped tight like the leather around a fastball. And a week of soaking didn't do much but change their colour. This method must work well with seeds the consistency of over-ripe peaches, but not Butia fresh off the tree. Then the wire brush. I thought I was being smart getting the strongest bristle available. These seeds are the "just drying" and you can see, after a week, are starting to mold. Unfortunately, the bristle groupings are wide enough apart that the seeds just slip between them and get stuck. No go here as well. Then I turn to my tickle trunk and pull out a plastering trowel, thinking I can crush the fruit, thus loosening the fibrous skin and remove easily. Not a chance! Dismal failure #3. Finally I use a seed-skinner's equivalent to the carpenter's famous fix-all: get a bigger hammer; I got a cinder block. Here's where some rubber finally met some road. Although this pic shows me trying to crush the dried seeds in a nursery tray (didn't work worth shite), when I took the soaking seeds and the cinder block down to the road and put seeds between concrete and concrete, then finally, I was able to scrape them around enough to loosen the skin.