Leaderboard

Miltonia regnellii var alba has adjusted to its new home in my garden. It's previous host, a guava tree, was extracted last Spring.

Cattleya lueddemanniana coerulea, Cattleya lueddemanniana ('Maria Cecilia' x 'Mariauxi'). I read that this species usually does not flower on its second annual growth for the season. It it must’ve been real happy with the hot, humid weather over the past weeks. NYT wrote that the humidity levels on the eastern seaboard were about the same as the Amazon rainforest last week. A real homecoming for the species.

These are the palms growing in my front yard. They are all fairly recently planted between 1 and 3 years in the ground. My Chamaerops humilis that has an oddly strong costapalmate shape to all the new leaves that have grown this year. it’s only the newest leaves on the main trunk doing this. The oldest leaves are flat. Butia odorata that I got from Home Depot for $70. I wish it was blue but for that price I’m not going to be picky. I did a deep dive on an older post talking about the shift from most of the mass produced ones being blue to now the green ones being most common. I also wonder if the ones with strong blue coloration may be more hardy.. Sabal rosei that @Chester B inspired me to try that was planted this summer. It’s a decent size and was a really reasonable price from project palm Rhapidophyllum hystrix planted this spring. It’s in part sun because I had heard they appreciate some shade.. but I’m not sure that shade would be necessary in PNW climate. It does get at least 6+ hours of strong sun though. It has 4 pups and I’m trying to decide if I should just select a few to have a more structured look or just let it grow fully wild bush style. Trachycarpus princeps x wagnerianus Still very small but starting to really speed up this summer. It has some nice blue coloration and the underside of the leaves are super white but it doesn’t show up well in the pic Trachycarpus fortunei is just a required staple in the PNW. It’s a random seedling but it’s got really nice blue coloration on the underside of the leaves and the leaves are surprisingly rigid on it. It grows so fast, pushes 3 spears at a time all growing season. Sabal minor - this year it just started picking up speed.. it’s starting to open its 3rd leaf of the year and there’s a nice size spear behind it already. The old leaves are pretty yellow I think from not fully realizing how quickly the planting spot got dry last summer. All of these are planted on a large south facing mound. It has been helpful having everything on a slope since the native soil is pure clay.

A line up of today's potential favorite but I just couldn't decide. Encephalartos blue arenarius, Encephalartos inopinus and Cycas multifrondis.

The good old excelsia, it’s been around a long time. Somewhat problematic after a few years in the garden. My solution to this problem is I cut them right back to just one stem and it sorts them right out real fast. Just one single stem will even have the most die hard palm nut asking what variety of licuala is that. It not only contains a problem child in the garden, you also get an interesting look about the garden.

Wodhyethia has become a victim of its own success. Imagine if it was discovered today - a large, landscape suitable palm with a crownshaft, self cleaning and large very full and plumose fronds. You can understand the attraction beyond the palm enthusiast community. I have friends and family that go up to the tropics and subtropics and have showed me photos of Foxtail palms being wowed by them and asking what they are. Objectively they are a beautiful species when well grown and they are adaptable to a range of soil conditions and even some warm temperate regions. I’m right on the limit of where they will grow and there’s less than a handful of long term survivors that I know of (none look good), yet it doesn’t stop them being sold in the 1000s here and people still lap them up.

Causiarum update, it got bigger after milton A year and a month later ... My Causiarum marches on adding height and the crown is at least 3/4ths recovered. How tall is it now? I really don't know, its too tall for an accurate guess, 35' to 40' maybe. The wide angle lens might be making it look smaller, LOL! In person it a beast! Beccariophoenix ALfredii has recovered nicely too. cant get ground to tip of tallest leaf so I just shot 3-4' to the tallest leaf. 8-9' of clean trunk

As a palm grows larger so do the roots. At some point you may lose a lot of roots as they reach far away from the tree trunk. Generally less time in the ground is better. If its been in the ground a long time, I would root prune it in 4 stages over 4-5 months. You do this by digging a circumference around the tree at the desired rootball size. But you do this 90 degrees at a time then let sit and let those roots grow in close to the trunk, then next 90 degrees until done. IN this way you will transplant a palm with many more functional roots ready to expand. If you just have to rip it out, it might survive with a good size rootball, I haven dug mules before and each species/hybrid sp can be different in survivability of transplant. I would do it in late winter if the area freezes each year and I'd do it in mid fall if not. You dont want the plant to desperately need lots of new roots due to a full sun and dry/hot season climate which seems to be more common lately here in florida. And yes you will need to chop off some older green leaves as the roots needed to feed them will be reduced dramatically in a transplant.

Ravenea glauca in flower caught my eye today.

Mid summer is the time for Becarriophoenix to rock!

Hey Ben, I was at the SABG on July 14th and this is how the Livistona chinensis looks. Still showing damage from the freezing rain (and the cold) we had back in February. I was at the River Walk this past weekend and those still looked pretty good! I noticed that thee were three Queens remaining as well. Sadly two of them are zombie palms as the growing points were killed despite still having some green fronds. One Queen right next to the buildings survived. I am really happy with how my Robusta’s are looking this summer! They have really grown well and have such deep glossy green fronds. I’m going to enjoy them while they are still small. At some point, years from now, hopefully they’ll be as large as these two near the Pearl:

First question is how close to your foundation is it? I don't normally see Cycads creating a problems for foundations unlike some trees. A photo or two showing size of your Cycas revoluta will be helpful. Rather than chopping it down at ground level you can also dig it up and relocate it. Cutting it down to ground level will work on the main caudex but if there are some small subterranean pups they might survive and emerge later. I just posted a pup photo that I intentionally removed from the main caudex of my Encephalartos nubimontanus that finally flushed a leaf after transplanting about 3 years ago. I see you are in the "North Bay" but wasn't sure which bay you reference.

I hear you. I wasn’t happy about pulling them since they had just started to take off. I planted them a year or so prior. This picture was right after the freeze. The one on the left was a goner and never really got established. The middle one was nice and fat. It was the only one I was pretty sure would recover. The one on the right was also a “pretty sure”. But after 2 months, there was almost no growth and I started to have doubts. So I just started over rather than wait for the whole summer to see what happens and then try to figure out what to do with the bed. It was a pain in the ass and took a few days to dig out the roots but I don’t regret it at all. Also, my wife wanted a mango and this spot works great for it. The ground plants were coonties (Zamia Integrifolia) and flax lilies (Dianella Tasmanica) that I separated from other beds and were sitting in pots waiting for their time.

Look for ptychosperma waitianum and burretianum. New red leaf and a beautiful palm. Worth a try! I just put down 120 seeds iam that confident of burretianum! Richard

My Alphonso Mango tree hasn't produced fruit very consistently since planting it about a decade ago. A friend who is an avid orchid grower shared his secret for getting his under performing orchids to bloom. He holds the orchid over his rubbish pile and advises it that it's next home will be in the trash if it doesn't bloom. I tried threatening my Mango tree because my wife advised me that a non fruiting fruit tree is useless. She wanted to remove it. I see that my threatening has worked. Have you experienced a similar situation?

Ok. This is Florida I'm talking about here. You're not gonna get real temperatures in the negatives, and especially that negative. A google search would go a long way. Maybe I'll use a plus sign next time just for you 😉