About Thorns on Date Palms

[Cubbie Boy]

I have a Date Palm that is about 5 years old, that I grew from seed. It's about 3 feet tall, and I had never pruned it, until I started weeding around the base of it, and I was shocked to be stuck by thorns on it.  I had never known that Date Palms produce thorns. It has normal palm leaves, but closer to the trunk, the leaflets start getting narrower and stiffer, until within about 4 inches from the trunk, they are true thorns. I was so disappointed that my cute baby would do this to me. So I pruned off all the leaves that were in contact with the ground, so those thorns wouldn't stab me when I weeded. So my question is, will this palm always have thorns? I want to know, because now I have mixed feelings about keeping this plant. I worry about sometime in the future, if a leaf breaks off, and lands on me or my wife, stabbing us. Do these things ever outgrow the thorn stage?

[Silas_Sancona]

3 minutes ago, Cubbie Boy said:

I have a Date Palm that is about 5 years old, that I grew from seed. It's about 3 feet tall, and I had never pruned it, until I started weeding around the base of it, and I was shocked to be stuck by thorns on it.  I had never known that Date Palms produce thorns. It has normal palm leaves, but closer to the trunk, the leaflets start getting narrower and stiffer, until within about 4 inches from the trunk, they are true thorns. I was so disappointed that my cute baby would do this to me. So I pruned off all the leaves that were in contact with the ground, so those thorns wouldn't stab me when I weeded. So my question is, will this palm always have thorns? I want to know, because now I have mixed feelings about keeping this plant. I worry about sometime in the future, if a leaf breaks off, and lands on me or my wife, stabbing us. Do these things ever outgrow the thorn stage?

No, unfortunately.. They will always have them. One reason i don't/ won't grow  Phoenix palms, especially after seeing what the thorns can do to someone when impaled.. Nearly cost a former co-worker feeling in his arm. Barely avoided being stabbed in the eye myself that day while hauling fronds onto a trailer. 

[Jim in Los Altos]

All palms in the Phoenix genus have thorns. Some vicious, some not so. I have a few Phoenix varieties and there’s a huge difference from one palm to the next. The worst is one of my P. reclinata, very sharp and even the leaf tips will poke a hole in my skin. Another P. reclinata has thorns so soft that I can snack them head on and they just bend away. My big Canary Island Date that requires a 20 foot extension ladder to prune has nasty thorns. I wear leather rose gloves when pruning and never get hurt. 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Jim in Los Altos

[GottmitAlex]

3 minutes ago, Jim in Los Altos said:

All palms in the Phoenix genus have thorns. Some vicious, some not so. 

This. Just don't mistake the Phoenix genus with the Beccariophoenix genus (these are "thorn"less). 

[Jim in Los Altos]

Just now, GottmitAlex said:

This. Just don't mistake the Phoenix genus with the Beccariophoenix genus (these are "thorn"less). 

There’s no way to mistake a Phoenix with a Beccariophoenix! 

[GottmitAlex]

2 hours ago, Jim in Los Altos said:

There’s no way to mistake a Phoenix with a Beccariophoenix! 

Hear, hear!

[Josue Diaz]

Right, like Jim said, they will always have thorns. And just about every species (except for native rupicola and roebelenii) has pointed leaf tips. I use gloves and an extension pole to prune. I've been stabbed many times. 

[Butch]

I only have a roebeleni, but it is nasty to prune... I have used the thorns as a needle or awl if I'm outside and need something sharp... It certainly works for that!...

Butch

 

 

[sonoranfans]

I have a phoenix rupicola triple, the ony phoenix Ive seen that doesnt represent a real hazard to trim.   And it grows to a modest stature slowly so I can trim it without a ladder for another 20+ years.  Rupicolas are also the only phoenix that gets a spot in my yard.  Reclinata hybrids were the worst Ive seen, but dactylifera has nasty thorns.  If you trim it, you dont want to be under it and this become a problem with age unless you can afford to pay someone else to trim it.  This is where some initially inexpensive palms become expensive.  A washingtonia robusta costing $10 will end up costing you more than a $1500 copernicia fallaensis.  Its kind lf like italian cars, the initial price is not what you need to consider, it s that plus upkeep.  For this reason, about 3/4 of my yard is self shedding, cheaper than dicots and cheaper than palms that dont self shed when they all mature in ten years.  

[Cubbie Boy]

Thanks everyone for the answers. 

[DoomsDave]

@Cubbie Boy nice to meet you sorry to hear about the pain.

Maybe take a picture of your palm so we can tell you more about it?

Phoenix can be great plants for a garden but there’s no denying they’re thorny.

The best thing to do with yours is just snip off the thorns with clippers. In commercial date groves in the California desert there’s crews of guys whose job it is to remove the spines to make the trees easier and safer to harvest dates from.

I hope getting stuck doesn’t spoil the palm’s beauty for you. They’re great in so many ways, so easy to grow and tough and untempermental.

[topwater]

No, they never grow out of the thorn stage, but once they trunk, you can pull off the dead leaves w/o drama. The seedlings are murderous to trim.  

[topwater]

At this stage you can safely yank and pull dead fronds easily. 

[topwater]

At this stage, they can wound you in a bad way. 

[necturus]

If you yank ‘em down, make sure you dispose of them right away. I have had each of my big toes impaled by my deceased CIDP’s thorns. The pain is amazingly intense. I walked around with one thorn for a week before it finally came to the surface. It was pointing straight down at the joint and was about a centimeter or more long. The other is probably still stuck in there. I still like Phoenix palms, but I’m super cautious around them now. 

[Zifool]

In my avis the most agressive is theophrasti phoenix !

[PalmatierMeg]

All Phoenix spp are unrelentingly vicious. We have a pygmy date trio my husband insisted on buying (he claims to hate spiny plants). They are 8-9' tall now and we have to judiciously prune them 3-4 times per year. And as they are 2 female, 1 male we have to cut down seeds by the bucketload. 

[DoomsDave]

Phoenix rupicola is really nice

Here’s one of my pair of girls

 

[sonoranfans]

True Rupicola has thorns that are flexible, they tend to bend easily at the petiole so you dont get stabbed.  I have trimmed my rupicola triple for near 10 years with nary a stab.  I had a number of phoenix palms when I lived in arizona, including sylvestris, dactylifera, pygmy date, and what appeared to be a CIDP/reclinata hybrid.  That hybrid was going to be a BIG palm(suckers were 8-10" caliper(with leaf bases) and it was only 12-14' overall when I left.  It had MANY thorns 3-4" long, and looked like natures best barbed wire.  When I moved into my current house the builder had put in a pygmy date multi trunk that was 4' tall.  Considering pygmy dates can need ~hundred of leaves trimmed a year, and remembering all my injuries to my 5 pygmy dates I had in arizona, I ripped it out,no more for me.  I had a sylvestris hybrid(too big for pure sylvestris) here and after being stabbed numerous times by leaflet tips I cut that down too.  Today I have my rupicolas, nice palms that provide great screening and vibrant color but no stiff thorns.  Were I still in 9a with feser choices, not sure what i would do, but I sure dont want lots of bloody palm trimming experiences any more.   The only palms that dont self shed that I have that also have vicious thorns are copernicia alba blue(the blue makes it worth it), and livistona saribus which grows nice and slow with about 3' trunk after 10 years.   I like the tropical look of the big leafed saribus, so I will not remove it.  If you dont plan to stay with your garden(sell the house) Im not sure it matters what you grow that stabs.  In this case I'm not planning to move, too much work invested.  I wonder how big that reclinata/CIDP hybrid is now?  I hear they grow up to 35-40' tall in multi trunk (continually) suckering form.    

[Mangosteen]

Most Phoenix palms have nasty thorns, but they don't hold a candle to Salacca cultivars.

 

 

[Cubbie Boy]

Thank you everybody for answering, and thank you for all the pictures you posted. I've decided to keep my Date Palm, because my wife says that she likes it. Now that I know that it has those thorns, I know to be careful. Somebody asked me to post some pictures, so my wife took them for me, because she's got a better phone/camera than I do.  These pics were taken today, 4-15-20, here in Ocean View, Hawaii. The last picture has me in it, which I was not aware of at the time, but I included it here, because I wanted to have the cat in a pic, to have a reference for size.

[GottmitAlex]

15 minutes ago, Cubbie Boy said:

Thank you everybody for answering, and thank you for all the pictures you posted. I've decided to keep my Date Palm, because my wife says that she likes it. Now that I know that it has those thorns, I know to be careful. Somebody asked me to post some pictures, so my wife took them for me, because she's got a better phone/camera than I do.  These pics were taken today, 4-15-20, here in Ocean View, Hawaii. The last picture has me in it, which I was not aware of at the time, but I included it here, because I wanted to have the cat in a pic, to have a reference for size.

 

 

Nice! Just don't forget they're dioecious.

 

 

[Cubbie Boy]

1 hour ago, GottmitAlex said:

Nice! Just don't forget they're dioecious.  You bet.   Yes, I never really intended it for fruit, just as an ornamental.  I've got lots of space, but very little soil or water, so I could only have one palm. If I'm lucky, it'll be a female. and maybe the wind will bring some pollen from somewhere. But if not, that's OK too.   

 

 

 

[UK_Palms]

Be careful trimming up your Phoenix palms guys, or any palm with spikes for that matter.

I was trimming up my CIDP yesterday and clearly wasn't paying close enough attention to the spacial awareness in regards to the other fronds. I moved my hand suddenly and a spike on another frond nailed me, right at the base of the petiole. Where the real nasty spikes are found. The thorn went right down to the bone in my thumb and must have nicked a large blood vessel or something because it bled quite a bit. Hurt like hell obviously. The force that I hit into it actually caused the thorn to snap off as well, so I had to pull it out with tweezers.

The thing is, Canariensis is one of the least spiky out of the Pheonix types (compared to Theophrasti, Reclinata, Dacty etc). And my CIDP isn't even that big a specimen either, meaning smaller-medium sized spines. But it still did this. Right on my thumb joint. It has made my thumb go stiff and hard to move. Hopefully that's just due to swelling and not because it pierced a tendon or something...

[DoomsDave]

@UK_Palms, ouch!

Been there done that, usually heals right up. You should be okay soon, in a week or two. If you keep feeling anything in there, see the docs.

Usually CIDPs aren't that bad.

Let us know how you are!

[JLM]

Keep the rubbing alchohol on that, should heal up quick. 

[GottmitAlex]

On 8/8/2020 at 8:21 PM, UK_Palms said:

Be careful trimming up your Phoenix palms guys, or any palm with spikes for that matter.

I was trimming up my CIDP yesterday and clearly wasn't paying close enough attention to the spacial awareness in regards to the other fronds. I moved my hand suddenly and a spike on another frond nailed me, right at the base of the petiole. Where the real nasty spikes are found. The thorn went right down to the bone in my thumb and must have nicked a large blood vessel or something because it bled quite a bit. Hurt like hell obviously. The force that I hit into it actually caused the thorn to snap off as well, so I had to pull it out with tweezers.

The thing is, Canariensis is one of the least spiky out of the Pheonix types (compared to Theophrasti, Reclinata, Dacty etc). And my CIDP isn't even that big a specimen either, meaning smaller-medium sized spines. But it still did this. Right on my thumb joint. It has made my thumb go stiff and hard to move. Hopefully that's just due to swelling and not because it pierced a tendon or something...

Hence my aversion towards spiky/armed palms...

 

[DRE]

Can you clip off the thorns and not damage the palm?