An Observation on Coconut Palm growth rates

[Really full garden]

I arrived at my beach house late this afternoon with just enough time to make a drink and get into the pool to watch the sun drop into the Pacific.I did notice something that I had not noticed before and that is that the 40 or so coconut palms that I planted eight years ago as barely sprouted nuts are now equal to or larger than the eight mature cocos ( 3 - 4 m of clear trunk)that I had planted around my pool.

After the expense of building the house I had little money left to spend on purchasing large mature coconuts and made do by planting sprouted nuts I found.There is now no difference between these two groups.

Photos to follow ,its too dark now.

[Really full garden]

The first photo is of some cocos that were planted as just sprouted nuts eight years ago.They had no pinnate leaves yet and the tallest leaf spike was just about the height of the two allagoptera arenarias that are about 1m tall.

The second photo are some of the cocos that were planted as mature landscape size palms with 2m of trunk.I wanted some instant privacy from my neighbors They have only grown about 1.5 meters in eight years.The transplanting methods here are very primative and the setback is quite clear compared to the cocos planted as sprouted nuts.

[Jeff in St Pete]

Scott, your coconut palms look great! The ones that you planted by the pool with 2 meters of wood look like dwarfs. Talls usually don't fruit at that size unless they were stunted because of the tranplant. It's hard to tell in the other photo, but maybe some of the newer ones are Pacific Talls which grow faster than the dwarfs?

[Walter John]

This is a very good topic and is true for many palms from my experience, observing and talking to others. In fact from talking to others, I decided very early on to plant young. The mature planted palm is often outgrown or at least caught up by the juvenile planting. In addition to this, the mature planting doesn't usually have that true form whilst the young planting grows into the true form nicely. Archos are a good example, I am not surprised Cocos nucifera perform the same. For many on the board it is too difficult to plant too young with climate not being ideal, but for those that can, I always recommend to plant young for the home grower.

[Really full garden]

Scott, your coconut palms look great! The ones that you planted by the pool with 2 meters of wood look like dwarfs. Talls usually don't fruit at that size unless they were stunted because of the tranplant. It's hard to tell in the other photo, but maybe some of the newer ones are Pacific Talls which grow faster than the dwarfs?

Jeff the ones planted by the pool are dwarf yellow and dwarf green. The ones planted out on the lawn are a mixed bag of dwarf and a few Panama Tall which have a massive trunk compared to the dwarf varieties.These were sprouted nuts that I just found here at the beach and at the inland finca where I used to live.

[Really full garden]

This is a very good topic and is true for many palms from my experience, observing and talking to others. In fact from talking to others, I decided very early on to plant young. The mature planted palm is often outgrown or at least caught up by the juvenile planting. In addition to this, the mature planting doesn't usually have that true form whilst the young planting grows into the true form nicely. Archos are a good example, I am not surprised Cocos nucifera perform the same. For many on the board it is too difficult to plant too young with climate not being ideal, but for those that can, I always recommend to plant young for the home grower.

Wal you are so right.Its nice if you can afford mature landscape size specimens and have a local source for them.In Guatemala there are very few palm species that are available as landscape size.About 90% of all the palms I have both here at the beach and in my highland garden I have grown from seed.