Queen palm trunk offset defect (what caused it?)

[Walt]

Two or three years ago I started to notice one of my queen palm's trunk starting to develop a defect, as shown in the below three photos. I have no idea what caused the defect. I'm only posting this to see if others may have either experienced this defect with one of their own palms or saw it on a palm other than their own palms-- and if they have any idea what caused the defect.

I planted this palm as a one gallon size in April of 1998. My fear now concerns the structural integrity of the palm's trunk where there is an obvious breach, or separation of the trunk's cross section that extends almost halfway through the trunk. I expect the entire top of the trunk and crown to come crashing down one day in high wind. I just had this palm trimmed and cleaned of dead fronds and fruit stalks, spathes, etc., about a week ago. Other than the trunk defect, the palm seems healthy in every other aspect. Anyone have any ideas as to what caused this defect? There is actually two defects, the trunk partial separation, then an offset above it.

[KennyRE317]

i guess you got a branching variety, there was a thread awhile back that had a few of these that branched, some say it's from some sort of shock or over pruning but who really knows

[Ben in Norcal]

That cut looks disturbing

[palmislandRandy]

It looks like it recovered from a severe boron deficiency.

[Bill H2DB]

I have seen this same thing.

It has mostly been on palms that were just a few years old , with trunks at about 5' or so.

Most seemed to grow out of it , but I feel that it was a deficiency that improved as the roots

reached better soil. I fertilize only moderately .

( I have poor excessively drained sand here , being the first dune west of the ICW .)

[Kostas]

What Randy said,one of the typical damages unfortunately.

[Walt]

I emailed my photos to the University of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, to see what their opinion is. I will post back if and when I get a reply. answer.

[Pando]

It doesn't look safe to me. If it was in my yard and I had kids running in there, I would cut this down asap and plant something much better over there.

[Walt]

It doesn't look safe to me either. But there's no kids and the palm is far away from the house. It's just one of many queen palms lining my long driveway. I expect one day a strong wind will snap the trunk. But in strong winds I won't be standing anywhere near this palm.

[jkell]

I have this same problem with one of my queens. Were you able to find out if it was a hazard ? Is there a way to secure the trunk in that area where it has split? Straps of some sort? I would not like to lose this palm as it is 30 yrs old and expensive to replace.

[Palmdude]

Do you usually cut it back that hard? Looks over pruned.

[Walt]

I just had this queen palm trimmed (along with 21 other queens and Sabal palmettos) that line my driveway and in my main yard. The subject queen was a real mess with so many dead fronds, dead seed stalks, etc. With that stuff in the way I couldn't have gotten a photo of the offset trunk.

I sent an email (with photos) to Dr. Monica Elliott at the University of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, to see what she thought about my queen palm. Below is her reply to me (but I doubt my queen palm suffered from cold damage as none of my other queens did):

This is something we have been observing on queen palms (and other palms), and we have been seeing this more often in the last few years. We think this is due to cold damage from the winter of 2009-2010 – the winter when it stayed cold for months and we had freezes. We saw a number of less cold-hardy palms with trunk damage – sometimes it is manifested by localized trunk cracking and sloughing off of the epidermis, sometimes we have observed a local decay that, unlike Thielaviopsis, just stops once the dead tissue due to the freeze has been eaten up. Other times, especially on coconuts, the trunk damage was so severe, it killed the palm.

We honestly don’t know how vulnerable to wind damage such a palm is. We know that palms that have gone through severe stress due to nutrition and/or drought results in an hour-glass shape (like the photo attached), and they are perfectly sturdy. But, they are uniformly constricted all the way around and would still have all the vascular tissue. Palms like yours are the unknown. In general, we have been suggesting that people remove the palm if it is in a high traffic area. We had a coconut that look similar to yours that we did take down here at the center – although it wasn’t producing very many leaves so it may have had more damage than your queen palm. However, if, as you say, it isn’t in an area where it would cause harm and the canopy looks good, you might want to leave it just to see what happens.

[jkell]

Thanks for the response. I agree I think its from deficiency manganese or boron. Same with my palms only one suffered this problem. Sounds like a judgement call. Im assuming nailing simpson strong tie straps into the palm is a bad idea to band aid the split...

[Josh-O]

queens can be weird like that.