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Here’s an update on how this palm looks roughly two years later. It’s been a relatively fast grower for me so far and is one of the most colorful palms in my collection.

We got hit pretty hard by hurricane Lala With many trees down. I got very lucky that the only palm loss was a Kerriodoxa elegans that had the unfortunate fate to end up under a giant fallen Guatemalan cypress and one of my peach palms came down. The Kerriodoxa still has a spear so it will make it. I chainsawed the peach palm and will eat the heart of palm, but it’s already got suckers coming up so no problem there. We’ve had a number of hurricanes come by pretty close, but nothing was ever as bad as hurricane lala. I also learned that the damage seems to be consistent with winds coming down vertically from above as opposed to sideways, which is very weird. Several places had trees down in a 360° radius. I looked this up and it seems to be a thing with hurricanes. They’re called mini downbursts. I was pleasantly surprised by the amazing tolerance of Bismarck palms. But also very disappointed in beccariophoenix which sadly are pretty much all leaning sideways. I am going to leave them that way so they make that coconut style curve at the base. But talk about a weak palm none of them have trunks yet so perhaps they will root in better once they make a trunk. I figured the Big Island would be a pretty safe place from global warming, but clearly it’s not. The super El Niño is churning out storm after storm and Hawaiian waters are now warm enough for them to actually intensify close by. on Sunday, another tropical storm is passing by this time much further to the south.I guess you can pick your poison, either fire And drought or hurricanes. I also learned what a hurricane cut means. Most of our royal Palms are now sporting that hurricane cut. They have a very effective coping mechanism of just dropping lower leaves, which is not good for anything going under them, but they look fine. .

Dave I would place in the shade and only use organic fertiliser like fishmeal or seaweed until they re established

It’s pretty easy to see what makes a saintlucei so popular. You can’t go past that beautiful look of an accent palm, with a trunk that’s straight as an arrow and the arched leaves to the white crownshaft. Easy to grow with a little dry, cool tolerance. They love black sandy loam soil that’s free draining. Single plants will set seeds. Just another one of those Chrysalidocarpus that are an absolute winner!

Iam not to sure what gives such deep red, I do know it’s anthocyanins that cause the red. But some years I get a lot of deep red colour and other years lighter red. It could be temperature, moisture, heat, cold. Whatever it is we need more of it!

I was particularly impressed by the size of the male cone on my Encephalartos munchii. It is the first time it coned and I don't recall seeing any munchii cones in person before. I had no perspective on what to expect until it began to stretch out and start dropping pollen. I decided to get out the tape measure just to see how tall it is. With the peduncle, the first cone is topping out at about 37" but the peduncle adds about 10" of that 37". Since my Encephalartos cerinus is also now yielding a little pollen and has likely achieved its full size, I measured it as well. This cone seems bigger than past, but now I will have a measurement as opposed to memory to gauge future cones on this species, or at least this plant. The cerinus is about 24" inclusive of the peduncle, which is about 4" tall.

Cycas panzhihuaensis x Cycas taitungensis

It’s often hot and dry in my coastal valley location in the summer but Hedescepe do exceptionally well despite that. Not sure how AI would rate my area but, as long as the palm is in shade or partial sun and watered often it will be happy.

These are at the corner of N. Delaware and 1st. Thought I would share pictures, as these are starting to clear the hedge in front. Nice old house back there too.

Photo of mine

Just giving one of the best Australian palms around a bit of palm talk tourism promotion, as your next holiday spot down under in Australia if you want to see them in habitat for yourself on holidays.

They certainly like cooler climates . I’m afraid I’m a little too far inland , like my friend Dave. It would probably grow but struggle . Harry These are growing very well , about 5 miles from the coast in Ventura California. Towering over the second story of apartment building where they were planted by the Sullivans. They are on the north side of the building so they got plenty of shade when they were young. When I was first introduced to these palms , they were still well below the building .

And today’s little special winner is a nice healthy Geonoma pycnostachys, straight out of the end of winter and into the ground. The full royal treatment for this beauty, quality soil amendments along with being right next to the tap, pole position in the garden went into this one, the old chicken pidgeon coop, that had 20 years off bird poo. If I can’t grow this one in that soil iam going home!

Nice flush on C panz x C multifrondis pushing through a pollinated cone.

Chamaedorea radicalis, a nice Cham to have in the garden very tough and a lot good looks for little effort.

I was also excited to get myself a birthday present recently. I found a couple of silver Sabal uresana from Teddy's Nursery on eBay. They arrived healthy, and they already have great color: That little leaflet on the left is a dactylifera for color comparison.

I had the chance to visit Discovery Point at SeaWorld San Antonio today, and I snapped a few pics while there. Nice use of Sabals: Chamaerops: There are a few Phoenix dactylifera in the area. This one was a pup growing up from a stump: While this one appeared to be planted as a single (not a pup) There were even some really over-trimmed needles in the area: And some Butia: My 8 year old for scale: Sagos and counties: Lastly, it has been so hot and dry for the last month that even the squirrels at SeaWorld are feeling the heat. This one was laying flat on shady concrete under a fan:

Chamaedorea woodsoniana crownshaft patterns.

Given the potential damage it sounds like you did pretty well. The fact that you didn't bring up any damage to your house, safety issues must have been limited to flying debris.

Here is an Ai rating of Hedyscepe canterburyana

Only five hundred more years to go....

Rather large ! I can’t use them all but a bunch are spoken for , ahem….Dave! That still leaves quite a few . Harry

This Kaapsehoop Cycad caught my attention in the setting light this evening. It is still a juvenile.

A nice little 18 year old dypsis louvelli goes in the garden at the end of winter. I have been waiting a long time to plant this special one, one rare palm!

Beautiful little palm, with a nice white backdrop should highlight for all to see from the street and make em go wow! It doesn’t matter where they are, you get a big impact statement for not a lot of trouble of growing.

Thanks for looking

I've tried saw Palmettos in the past and I could never get one to grow, but I decided to try again and this time I decided to create artificial drainage with drainage gravel, I replaced all native soil with sand and equal parts garden soil and then topped off with pure sand. And for the first time I have a saw palmetto that's actually growing and not rotting away. I've included the drainage I've created. It's a lot deeper than it looks in the image,the idea was to make water quickly drain away down Hill.

Iam quite impressed with the tashiroi, coming out of winter looking like it was a spring festival. Not too worried about winter the least, pretty good for a seedling.

They should trim the hedge so the Parajubaea can be seen better.

I’ve wondered about this. If you think about some species like Prestoea acuminata, various Geonoma sp like G undata, even Washingtonia filifera now that W robusta is lumped in, then the differences between Archontophoenix species (I’m thinking especially A alexandrae, maxima, myolensis and tuckeri) are relatively small. Recently genetic study is becoming much more accessible and affordable so hopefully there can be a study to understand the relationship between all of the Archontophoenix species.

Not exactly in Texas but I think it’s remarkable that this row of coconuts along the mainland portion of Daytona FL survived 23-24° earlier this year . Even a few Christmas palms are coming back . 😱

A beautiful little Pinanga sarawakensis.

Ive been spreading absurd amounts of sabal minor and sabal palmetto seeds in the woods here however this specific spot on our property I've decided to get a little more aggressive and planted Needle palms, and sabal minors, as well as Long Leaf Pine. I have no idea what I'm trying to recreate at this point, it started off as coastal scrub idea, and now it's straight up Florida Caverns State Park... Just in Tennessee. Majority of the palms have been planted literally right before the historic massive ice storm we had here last winter. So they took quite the beating compared to palms I've had planted several years ago. Somebody warned me that planting needle palms in January was a bad idea, I planted 7, 1 rotted away, 6 spear pulled and recovered. Sabal minor, only crushed and bruised up from the sleetcrete glacier Combo. For reference the sletecrete was like 4in deep or something. With a glaze that was around 2in Thick

I germinated a batch of these Jan 2026, coming on strong now in their second summer. I've got a couple extra, free to any local palm gardeners willing to pick up or meetup in the Ft Myers area. I have other misc seedlings around too, feel free to message if you're local I'd like to find good homes for them.

Could you copy Dowe’s description mate? I’ve seen references to it online but not in full detail. I’m mainly interested in whether it mentions the presence of ramenta on the abaxial surface of the leaflets (I couldn’t tell from your pics but it should be pretty clear at the size of your plants if you can get photos of the underside of leaflets) and the fruit and seed size. I’d probably defer to those with more experience, but just my 2 cents: Archontophoenix have been cultivated for generations now, particularly A cunninghamiana and A alexandrae. Although there’s clear evidence that they can hybridise (Albang and reverse and some purpurea hybrids on this forum), my experience is that seed from a specimen in a garden with other Archontophoenix sp will generally stay true to the mother. There are also areas of overlap with the native habitat range of A cunninghamiana and A alexandrae yet natural hybrids are extremely uncommon from what I know. I’d guess Archontophoenix sp are nothing like Chrysalidocarpus sp which almost seem to act functionally dioecious when multiple species exist in the same garden. I’m not sure the risk is huge in Richard’s case for example, but it is something that’s good to be aware of.

Stanhopea orchid flowering ( not sure of the species ) I have inherited a few specimen's from my father and I'm not really an orchid person per se, so I'll see how I go with them...

Ravenea glauca

The rain and storms right now are insane in western pasco county. Areas that have been dry are getting nailed tonight. My weather station picked up a 6 inch an hour rainfall rate.

Very interesting what Dowe says. How this form escaped from widespread cultivation I don’t know. Yeah, I used to think Eungella was the furthest northern Bangalow population but recently I found that Mt Elliott had them and that is the northern most limit. I wanted to check that area out but we just ran out of time in Townsville. It’s not an easy climb either. About 12hrs one way and the track now goes through private land meaning it’s more than just a “let’s have a quick look” type of place. It’s also the place where the stepped trunk version of alexandrae comes from. I think it’s been called Archontophoenix alexandrae var beatricea. I think for Archontophoenix the real jewels are up in the clouds at altitude. We went to the town of Paluma for a quick look and it’s at 1000m asl. It was 27C on the coastal plain and 18C when we got up there. Lots of Calamus australis and moti, and the first place we’ve found Laccospadix australasica and in large amounts. Beautiful place up there. We didn’t find any Livistonas up there but we were likely on the wrong track for them. Paluma roughly marks the start of the Wet Tropics. After that you’re in Licuala territory.

My macrocarpa is doing great in this spot and microclimate. It just opened up a new frond. Thought I would share in case anyone in the area is considering buying one. I would add Im in central Valencia, climate may differ slightly from places further north in foothills where it gets colder, like Saugus, Canyon Country. The teddy bear palm has been doing exceptionally well, it’s almost in full sun most of the day.

Im definitely guilty of being that guy after having a palm weevil fly into my back slider. In my head I looked like Brad Pitt fighting in the movie Troy but judging by my wife and kids laughter im guessing it was more like Homer Simpson trying to hula hoop.

I will let you know. Always into sharing palms with folks! I just built a greenhouse for my seedlings , not a large scale operation by any stretch. I have many Chamaedorea Radicalis Tree form around the house ….and many seeds. I give those seeds away to folks who want them . You could just push them in the ground in the garden and they will pop up in a couple of months or so. They germinate easily and are pretty tolerant of sun and cool weather. Harry This one is about 3-4 years old , getting ready to trunk. Soon it will be over head! This was a volunteer.

I have two Baselonga planted together that look very similar to the small potted one. They are very slow at that age. Harry Dypsis Basilonga , tied together to keep the petioles from breaking in the wind. The leaves are very long for the size of the petiole. The petiole are very dark when first emerging. Harry

No , I have regular business there . We are out there two to three times a week. Right now I have a lot of work for a vendor out that way . Yesterday was the hottest I’ve seen in a while , usually it is in the 90,s. I can watch the temp climb as I drive the 126 through Filmore and Piru . Harry

Three beautiful chamaedorea adscendens in the garden loving winter!

Another winter winner straight out of the pacsoa showroom floor straight into the garden in mid august! Licuala sallehana a cracker of a great licuala to have.

What caught my eye was my freshly planted Geonomas pycnostachys that went into the ground today!

Looks terrific , thanks for sharing . I was just out in Valencia (Old Road) today and it was 101f ! You must be doing something right. Harry

Just a suburban Ravenea rivularis.