Roystonea regia at Pond Apple Slough park in Fort Lauderdale

[paquicuba]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the the royal palms growing in "Pond Apple Slough park" in Fort Lauderdale are native or human-planted? I saw some solitary ones in very dense and difficult to access parts of the park that I doubt anyone went that far to plant them — perhaps birds? 

 

[Palmsbro]

Yes, I agree that it was birds. If there were very large ones (~30 ft +), then they were most likely native.

[paquicuba]

Actually, there are large ones in the middle of the park but I couldn't get to them. The large ones I photographed were not far from the parking lots.

However, I don't believe they were planted to enhance the look at the parking lots since they seem to be in random positions, among other native trees. 

[Dave-Vero]

Nice photos.  Historically, the Bartrams really did see royal palms on the St. Johns River.  The locality can be pinned down fairly closely.  Severe freezes might have ensured that botanists after the Bartrams never saw royals so far north; in fact, nowhere but the Big Cypress.  The exact reason for this restriction wasn't entirely clear.  Yes, some freezes had been devastating, but royals grow very well outside of their southwest Florida range.  So of course once many thousands of them were planted in southeast Florida, they moved into natural areas.  It's happened pretty widely and I think some park managers may have removed them as not native to the local area.  By contrast, Everglades palm, Aceolorraphe wrightii, is very widely planted outside its native range but doesn't seem to have escaped 

 

[paquicuba]

2 hours ago, Dave-Vero said:

Nice photos.  Historically, the Bartrams really did see royal palms on the St. Johns River.  The locality can be pinned down fairly closely.  Severe freezes might have ensured that botanists after the Bartrams never saw royals so far north; in fact, nowhere but the Big Cypress.  The exact reason for this restriction wasn't entirely clear.  Yes, some freezes had been devastating, but royals grow very well outside of their southwest Florida range.  So of course once many thousands of them were planted in southeast Florida, they moved into natural areas.  It's happened pretty widely and I think some park managers may have removed them as not native to the local area.  By contrast, Everglades palm, Aceolorraphe wrightii, is very widely planted outside its native range but doesn't seem to have escaped 

 

Excellent piece of information!! Thanks a bunch!!! 

[kurt decker]

The Royal Palms you were talking about are probably volunteers, from cultivated plant seed. They are probably not native. Prior to the 1980's, Royal Palms are actually kind of scarce in South Florida as landscape plants. There were a few large groupings of them, Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, the lakes in Hollywood, the Mahi temple on the Miami River, but they were rare and awesome. There were very few stands of the native royal in existence either. Other than the Fakahatchee, and Taylor Slough in Everglades National Park, I don't know of any naturally occurring royals in Dade or Broward at that time. The Burger King in Florida City had a big stand of royals reputed to be native. Seedling regeneration was almost non-existent in those days. A virulent fungus killed off seedlings, both volunteer and in cultivation. A guy named Bill Jones in Lake Worth pretty much figured out how to get seedlings past the point where Helminthesporium fungus killed them by alternating fungicides. And Manny Diaz grew them by the thousand and started putting them everywhere. Nowadays, because of all the royals planted around South Florida, the fungus can't keep up. Royals volunteer everywhere. The ones in Pond Apple Slough were probably bird dropped seeds from the last 20 or 30 years, from cultivated plants. They fit right in, and it's nice to see them. But there was never royals in that swamp

[paquicuba]

Thanks Kurt!! Love to hear all those stories.