Chamaedorea nubium

[drzoidberg1]

This lil guy is pretty fast, since I've put it in the ground a few months back it's put out 2 new leaves and starting to throw another. Starting to clump as well. Great small palm for those tight spaces.

[XYZ]

Indeed, a nice palm that, like many colonial Chams, starts to offset when less than 50 cm tall.

Small and suitable for "tight spaces"? er, notsomuch. Grows to >4 m tall (>13') and clumps on rather long rhizomes when roots are free to run, eventually establishing very large colonies...very fast-growing when happy. While mostly middle-elevation cloud forest, they can be found at elevations as high as 2,800m (>9,000') in cold montane rainforest in western Guatemala, so can probably take frosts with ease. Would certainly expect brown-tipping over time if water quality suboptimal.

J

[drzoidberg1]

Thanks for the correction, I was informed that it wouldn't get that big...no more than 10 ft. also didnt know about the rhizomes. I might have to do some population control in the future.

[Jeff Searle]

But remember, your not living in the mountains of Guatamala either. A pretty rare Cham though...

[XYZ]

Jeff:

Perhaps it is a case of "the grass is always greener", but I have foregone growing this species in Guatemala in my garden in favor of seed-grown fragrans from your accession several years back. While fragrans is somewhat more susceptible to spider mites than nubium, IMO, it is hands-down more attractive, less invasive, and performs perfectly in the spots in my collection in Guatemala where I replaced nubium with it. The scented flowers on older palms are, of course, an added plus. Would, however, expect nubium to be much more cold-tolerant than fragrans up here. I have many seed-grown nubium of varying sizes for commercial market and may decide to cherry-pick a few down the road to trial in the Bay Area.

They are harvesting wild foliage of nubium both in Guatemala and in Chiapas for the cut flower trade. While localized, it is rather widespread and can be abundant where it occurs in undisturbed/lightly-disturbed forest.

There is also a new, handsome, short-statured colonial species from cloud forest in northwestern Central America that is visually somewhere between brachypoda and nubium but with pencil-thin stems even when 2m-6'+ tall. It has the advantage of having a very small footprint (i.e. spreading from very short rhizomes) and can be grown to perfection in a medium sized pot for many years. I have a number of these in Guatemala and they have the added advantage of suckering off their heels when about 30 cm-12" tall even in the seedling trays.

J

[Jeff Searle]

Thank you for sharing once again all the hands on experiences that you've gained over the years. I'm glad to hear that the C. fragrans are doing so well for you there. Have you seen or had any experiences with cross pollination of species in your garden? Thanks for sharing...

Jeff

[XYZ]

Jeff:

Yes, your fragrans are quite beautiful...very elegant-looking and to my eye appear much more like the photos in the Hodel monograph than the plants sold here on the West Coast.

I usually remove all male infls from species that are simultaneously flowering with a targeted species to avoid risks of contamination/unwanted hybridization. That having been said, now that I'm gone so much, I have recently seen spontaneous fruit set that I strongly suspect is hybrid origin in stricta, rojasiana and adscendens. Given my interest in conserving the purity of specific ecotypes of rare Chams, will probably abort all of this next trip. For things that will not open pollinate (tuercks, sullivaniorum, etc.), I have to hand-pollinate via dissection so very time and labor intensive. Hopefully the end results will be worth it.

Kind regards,

J

[JasonD]

Jeff:

Perhaps it is a case of "the grass is always greener", but I have foregone growing this species in Guatemala in my garden in favor of seed-grown fragrans from your accession several years back. While fragrans is somewhat more susceptible to spider mites than nubium, IMO, it is hands-down more attractive, less invasive, and performs perfectly in the spots in my collection in Guatemala where I replaced nubium with it. The scented flowers on older palms are, of course, an added plus. Would, however, expect nubium to be much more cold-tolerant than fragrans up here. I have many seed-grown nubium of varying sizes for commercial market and may decide to cherry-pick a few down the road to trial in the Bay Area.

They are harvesting wild foliage of nubium both in Guatemala and in Chiapas for the cut flower trade. While localized, it is rather widespread and can be abundant where it occurs in undisturbed/lightly-disturbed forest.

There is also a new, handsome, short-statured colonial species from cloud forest in northwestern Central America that is visually somewhere between brachypoda and nubium but with pencil-thin stems even when 2m-6'+ tall. It has the advantage of having a very small footprint (i.e. spreading from very short rhizomes) and can be grown to perfection in a medium sized pot for many years. I have a number of these in Guatemala and they have the added advantage of suckering off their heels when about 30 cm-12" tall even in the seedling trays.

J

UC Berkeley Botanical Garden has at least two specimens of Chamaedorea nubium that grew back from the 1990 freeze (at least a week of nights in the 20s F and as low as 14 F in the coldest spots of that garden). I don't believe they have a reproductive pair and it would be wonderful to have seedlings of this species in the SF Bay Area as it's quite handsome, hardy, and even sun-tolerant.

[Alberto]

I have 5 seedlings of C.nubium grown from seeds and also C.liebmanii.

I want to plant them out. Which spacing will be ideal?