Leaderboard

An Areca vestaria form and one of the Thrinax parvifolia forms - or at least obtained as such…

Looks to be Coccothrinax. The tall "bottle palm" I believe is a survivor Hyophorbe indica. This is Oliver's office, he used to post here.

A nice foggy day most of the day in my area. Had a lot of rain relatively speaking in November and the temperatures really haven’t dropped too much so far, so everything looks pretty darn happy. Dictyosperma album var rubrum, with the standard form and conjugatum at its base.

IMG_4583.mov

I don't know about on SPI, but after lunch at the Brownsville zoo @Fusca and I saw these just down the street at 535 Paredes Line. I'm not familar with them so my guesses at names might be wrong Corypha Arenga Tahina? Attalea & Syagrus schizophylla Trachycarpus princeps Unknown Unknown to me but I think Jon knows it. ...in addition to the Dypsis decaryi, Chamaerops argentea, royals and bismarks. There was also a tall but weak looking bottle and some small Butia archeri-looking palm. There's also a large silverish Nannorhops at the entry to that same address, much bigger than I see on the Google Street View imagery.

Plant a 1gal of each suggestion and see which ones win 😊

Be a trail blazer... I see that Floribunda has Ravenea musicalis on their list. No one else will have that! In 20 years or so, you might be the talk of the town.

Pintail Duck Gorgeous views on a beautiful day!

Nice silver on this Bismarck and this Heliconia.

The bees really love Syagrus inflorescence as well . I actually love bees in the garden flowers but the inflorescence gets the whole hive a buzzing! Harry

Copernicia sp. , another Copernicia sp. and Hyphaene sp.

Just up the street from that location is an old bank building across from a historic battlefield with more parking lot Royals and what I think is an Adonidia in a protected spot by the front door. There are some interesting palms but you have to keep your eyes open because lush, exotic landscaping doesn't seem to be a high priority. (Pic not from today.)

I openly admit I'm not smart or knowledgeable enough to do deep dives like some have done. And I'm biased but I think Sancho cameos enough should draw more attention. And I'm not trying to get famous or monetized or anything here, just generally wondering what people want to see so I can do it. But I agree with you on an outreach program to bring youth in. The best time to plant a palm tree is 20 years ago unless you're young, then it's today.

FYI for everyone on a bit of a tighter budget, T ‘Moc Chau’ is available on RPS from N Vietnam. Images and description similar to T ravenii. There must be so much to discover in that part of the world, new discoveries popping up frequently lately. Looking forward to going with IPS soon!

Chamaedorea cataractarum

sixteen months after planting the palm measures 52" tall with a new leaf opening(low). It seems to me that these like full sun, heat, and water and this one gets all of these in abundance. Bismarckia is faster, but then its faster than most palms I have, 35' in 15 years fast. Here is the 52" tall fallaensis which was planted august 2024 with pic in the initial post of this thread. If limit water they will be slower. Mine gets a real boost from our summer rains, no rain its not as fast. I irrigate it 3x a week on automatic timer and adding a non timed "rainbird sprinkler rain" in summer before the rains come.

Fantastic award-winning Texas barbecue lunch with a special dessert.

Yes Feng! Took this yesterday. I get more bees on my palms than any other flowering plant in the yard. IMG_3161.mov

The tag that was at the base of this palm (purchased over 15 years ago from Jeff Marcus at Floribunda) is GONE and I cannot for the life of me recall what palm this is. HELP!

Yeah, spinosa would like the moisture and canopy cover to look A+.

The dasyantha one palm that suits my growing style well. There a beautiful palm another great understory palm that does well in my garden. They do like water and will drink as much as you give them provided the drainage is there. And cool tolerant along with growing at a steady pace. Definitely worth planting in the garden.

A few seedlings of a different ptychosperma species, somewhat cool tolerant and an easy growing palm, another great one for that mild Mediterranean climate perhaps, taking temperatures down to 2 degrees Celsius. I don’t have any in the ground yet but would think by the amount of only just a few loses in the seedlings in this batch is a good indicator of tolerance! Another zone push winner. And i think I might appease the gods and make this a thread and therefore document cold tolerance in palms! A handy little thread for all intrested in cold tolerance of new varieties! This should appease the palm gods!

It’s a great way to document all the different varieties that will live and the complete failures, and if it helps with the decision of what palm to try then that’s a bonus. Cold my be a very obvious reason why some palms die in winter, but Ive also had the same variety of palms where only a few died from a certain batch of seedlings, a journal certainly will give a lot of ideas in zone pushing for growers to trial. My winter temps will obviously be a good judge for others to work with. While all zones will also have different variations depending on microclimate, so not exact science proven data but a good place to start. Richard

I think its Pinanga batensis

The colours of palm seeds are incredible and so beautiful!

This plus all the others mentioned. Make a jungle. Make sure to add a couple bananas to fill it out.

Something ridiculous that'll draw tons of attention.

C. Decipens splitting again. Started as a double then split to four trunks below ground level. Two trunks have split at about 50cm above ground. The photo shows a shared fused leaf A new spear has developed on either side of this leaf

I think brother @DoomsDave sent me these seeds about 2 years ago. At least I'm pretty sure they came from him because there's an absolute *expletive deleted* ton of them, and that's his style. If you've ever received seeds from Dave, you know when he sends seeds HE SENDS SEEDS. I'll be honest, I let them sit in a box for a while, then I did what I normally do and soaked them, put them in coir on a mat. And they languished and did nothing. Eventually, I pulled them out, soaked them again, and put them in another baggie about 6 months ago and put them back on a heat mat, this time with a thermostat (set to 87.5 if it matters). So this morning I start cleaning stuff out and finding stuff I'm giving up on - there's some seeds I KNOW have dried out, there's some stuff in pots I KNOW isn't going to sprout, and I lift up this baggie and I see green! I pulled these 2 out, there's another one that I'm gonna let marinate for another week or so, and a few more showing eyes. So that's cool! If I had known I was gonna find these, I would have recorded the video of me squealing profanities. I'm guessing these are gonna be in pots here and should be fun since the Google machine says they don't like constant humidity and don't like anything below 20°F but any care tips are appreciated and I'll be digging around the interwebs later.

Thank you Harry. And yes, this Brahea is regularly watered year round. There are several mature B. edulis around town that likey receive much less water and look decent but could look even better. That spot in my backyard is where I “hang out” for a while right out of bed in the morning pretty much year round and often at dusk as in these photos.

Not a lot of Marojejyas in Utah. Definitely a strong favorite.

not a public garden but always welcome palm nuts

Ptychosperma elegans flowers caught in the spiders web!

A robust anthurium late afternoon.

Brassiophoenix drymophloeoides and Itaya amicorum in the shade, and Dypsis sp. ‘Maroantsetra’ in the clear.

And in thirty years those seedlings will look like this. I planted this one as a small seedling.

Brahea Edulis are fairly easy palms . I’m glad you got a couple . They can take sun at an early stage , mine was planted in full sun , after buying it in a 10” pot , down in gopherville . Nothing bothers it ! It is really big now , after 25+ years . Much faster than Brahea Armata. Harry ‘I’ve posted this pic a few times before , it shows how it adapted to the hillside. The only one down there that did this.

With so few leaves certainly not happy. I feel bad for them stuck next to skyscrapers. I have lots of Roystonea borinquenas including many large ones. I can attest that with strong hurricanes they do shed leaves, but then new yellowish leaves are quickly pushed out. A survival response I guess. Normal winds and even Grade 1/2 hurricanes don’t harm mine at all. Those are Mauritia flexuosa palms in the foreground. However the Roystoneas planted in some PR commercial areas near me with parking all around are horribly chopped often. They are already stressed with pollution and grass competition for nutrients and compacted soil, etc. I do understand no one wants their car or themselves harmed by healthy heavy fronds. However there are many better palm choices that would look better and take less maintenance here.

Photo from today on this pleasant afternoon. Although this C. nucele does well here, it’s my only palm that occasionally attracts scale on old leaves primarily this time of year. I scrubbed them off one frond yesterday.

@mnorell Pauline Sullivan , Karl Doebler , and John Tallman were very inspirational to me when I started in 1990. Karl used to have some of John’s seedlings in the green house at Green Thumb in ventura . I bought many from there and some are still alive! Terry Sullivan told me the C. Decipiens that are so beautiful started out as 3 seeds his mom and dad got prior to 1951 , when he was born. Daring to say the least , no information or prior history to go by. Thank you for the info on the C. Nucele , I am hopeful for success with it . I am treating it as a shade palm here , with fractured sun during the afternoon. I have a Roystonia Oleracae that I got from Phil at JM over 25 years ago. The thought of a Royal Palm with a smaller trunk was incentive to try it. Phil said “ no way that will survive in Santa Paula “ . It is thriving ….so far. Well worth the $100 I spent on a small 3 gallon baby. I got into this on the heels of some great folks who were before me. Harry

Harry, you never know until you try...Pauleen Sullivan was a true adventuress and was unafraid to try unusual species, and she enjoyed marked success, as many of us know...and John Tallman was the first I'm aware of in the Ventura area to systematically trial and record and publish his results with every species he could try. He did us all a great service and it's sad that so many of his accomplishments were dispersed to the highest bidder by the college that had previously enjoyed the notoriety of his efforts. I still have one of his detailed reports from back in the day and I find it to be a very interesting and useful reference. I've lived in several different climates and always try pretty much everything that I can get my hands on, even sometimes if they are initially unappealing to me (since palms can grow on us!). I've tried some seemingly ridiculous things out here in the low desert and had some successes, but I planted Cyphophoenix elegans a few years ago thinking it might have the best chance in its genus...and my largest one just slowed down (from "slow" to "extra slow") and then just collapsed on me this year. I have no idea what mechanism was at work, and I still have one or two small ones doing okay for now (still frustratingly slow). Meanwhile I had a bad experience with C. nucele in the Florida Keys, it literally just sat there and barely grew for a couple of years, then was physically wiped out by Hurricane Irma. Just on a lark I planted a very small one here in the desert in the same bed with my C. elegans specimens, and lo and behold, it has grown very well! So I ordered a couple more from Jeff Marcus and they are awaiting a spot in the ground. The main issue out here, aside from the obvious one of irrigation, is sun-exposure during the hot season, and the long leaves (the main thing I love about the species) are a concern for me if they succeed in clearing the roof or the shelter-belt of canopy-trees I've been developing. So time will tell, but the long and the short of it is that it's worth trying things, and multiple times in multiple exposures/conditions, if you love the plant enough, to see if it can adapt to your particular situation. We wouldn't have the beautiful bottle palms in San Diego or the Sonoran desert today if everyone had listened to prevailing ideas for decades that they were just impossible outside the tropics or near-tropics.

My Parajubaea torallyi var microcarpa was purchased as a small 1gl and planted straight away in late 2006. It was my first non big box store purchase and survived the great freeze of 2007 months after panting. It is huge and hard tp photograph. I tried to get scale of the base with a 15gl bucket but the picture doesn't show how big it is because of the surrounding plants.

I like how they added the red lights at the top of the trunks.

Hi Chris, I'm guessing you meant Eucalyptus microtheca? If so, not surprising it died...that species is native to tropical savannah in northern Australia, would be very surprised if it could tolerate temps much below freezing. You might have more luck with the other Coolabah species, Eucalyptus coolabah, which reaches much further south and inland, including some pretty frosty winter areas. I've got one doing pretty well down here in Tasmania. It's a lovely tree as well!

Clinostigma samoense in a light drizzle. One of the world’s most beautiful palms. Tim

More user friendly Variegated Agave Attenuata. No spines on this one👍

some picture of Phoenix canariensis In situ to Ténérife Photos taken in the Masca plain in Tenerife

I have always used www.natureslawn.com bioactivate product. Its 17% humic liquid and has the fulvic acid too. The dry formula doesnt have much in fulvic and it just doesnt smell the same(stinky swamp), so I expect that upon drying there is other chemistry that is lost from the digested compost. The natureslawn bioactivate product has the highest humic acid concentration of any liquid I have found. When I lived out west, I couldn't get bioactivate shipped for a reasonable price so I did use some powder and it worked on potted flowers for me, obvious improvement. With small containers you don't need much. Any additions of solid or liquid humic acid will be much appreciated by your palms as they support mycorrhizal fungus and other beneficial microbes while putting chemical stress on nematode activity. I also recommend it for heavy clay soils as even if you ammend, it goes away. The humic acid can be used to adjust the bioavailable organic content of the soil in the short term, but the accelerated root growth you get should be long term if you are watering/feeding your root zones properly. One more thing, David, is that humic acid chelates salts in sandy soil that might have hydrophobic channeling. this allows the soil to be rinsed, cleaned of those hydrophobic salts which stunt growth. If I have a beading of water on soil, I uually with hit it with a spray of humic, let it sit for an hour, rinse and repeat 2x more. This ensures enough contact time to dissolve the salts.

Nematodes thrive in our sandy florida soils. I have been using humic acid for 18 years to control nematodes and enrich soil chemistry first in arizona then in florida for the last 11 years. Mulch every year and use the humic acid(liquid humic is better, contains fulvic acid as well). I am about to spray my palm roots down as the dry spring is the best time to apply since rain wont wash it away. humic acid is basically the final decomposition product of mulch. 1 gallon of 17% humic equates to about a ton of mulch degradation product. This allows you to rapidly alter your soil chemistry for the better. But keep mulching as the humic will hang around longer in soil that has organics. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353644262_Humic_acid_-a_potential_bioresource_for_nematode_control https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339080353_ACTIVITY_OF_HUMIC_ACID_AGAINST_ROOT_KNOT_NEMATODES_ON_TOMATO I do tend to target expanded root areas with the humic, concentrate it near the palm roots. Apply when the soil is dry an hour prior to an irrigation event. IF your palms are small, dont water long after application (dont rinse it away) and apply every 3 months. Large palms dont need it that frequently 1-2x a year depending on your organic soil content(less with more). Adding pesticides to my palms is something I almost never do. Beneficial soil microbes can be killed by pesticides too. Humic acid supports beneficial microbes in the soil while it attacks the harmful ones. Its like natures own protectant, but you dont have to wait for your soil to have a high organic load to get the benefits.