Fruiting Sabal Causiarum

[sonoranfans]

In  february 2011 I bought a sabal "domingensis" as a strap leaf seedling in a 4" by 4" x10" nursery container.  It came from Tejas tropicals.  Differentiation of domingensis and causiarum was reported by Scott Zona as a fruit size basis but also orders of branching in inflorescence in his monograph of carribean sabals in 1990.  While Don Hodel mentioned the ligures as a differentiating feature, there was no literature to back that up.  Zonas monograph had microscope slides of cross sections of cuticles leaf  cross sections showing differences between the species in his extensive work, so I have always gone with that research in ID'ing these palms.  Most of us can only use a visual inspection, like fruit sizes, inflorescence branching, and ligules.  I had a causiarum brought from CA to florida and this palm and they were labeled differently and looked very different.  Now the palm has set seed and it appears that what was labelled as domingensis, but it has the 4 orders(vs 3) of branching and smaller fruits the size of causiarum(7.5mm-10.5mm vs domingensis of 11-15mm) as defined by Zona.  Here is a flower stalk with fruit, and the base of the tree showing ligules.  This palm lost 8 green leaves damaged by hurricane irma which I cut off today.  3 had petioles split within the current crown and the 5 lowest leaves were bent to the ground.  Since june the trunk base diameter has swollen noticably, it sits at 40" with leafbases on.  Even after removing 8 leaves it has a decently sized crown.  Its a beast and apparently not a domingensis, but I can live with that.  

[sonoranfans]

actually looking at my post my causiarum has 3 orders and domingensis has 4.