A Couple of Questions About Fishtail Palms

[miss.gypsea]

Hello All,

First I will admit that I'm a novice gardener, so please forgive any improper terms!

I have a few questions about fishtail palms - as you can see in the pictures, I have multiple fishtails that were put in as part of a landscaping project. On many of them I have measured the new frond growth and they are growing a bit each night, which I take as a good sign! That said, I'm quite sure they have been massively under watered for months now, and one did in fact die (you can see in the photo that one has a pot sitting on top of the now stump). I've labeled all photos in the bottom right corner in red so hopefully that makes it easier to answer the questions

My questions -

1. Photo #1 - I'm trying to determine the health of one of the big palms, especially. It has a big brown center stalk. I think the crown may have been cut off by a gardener? But I'm not really sure what I'm looking at. It appears that there's no crown on that tree, is that right? Or is that a dead looking center stalk? There are no branches growing off of that stalk. 

2. Photo #2 It looks like I have some sucker branches growing or are these going to be multi-trunk trees? If they are multi trunk, I wonder about space. If they are sucker branches should they be cut? I suppose they could be growing from seeds that have been dropped, but it seems they are connected to other trunks.

3. Photo #3 shows the palms from a bit farther away with a bucket in the image to give you an idea of the height of the soil depth.

Thanks for any insight. Frankly, it's nearly impossible to find knowledgeable people in the area so I'm doing a lot of self learning.

Thanks!

[Fusca]

For your question about photo #1 I would mark the brown spear (center stalk) and adjacent leaf boot with a marker to see if there is any growth (movement) in the coming days.  It's possible that the gardener cut back some damaged part.  The center spear should eventually open up to a new leaf as this is how palms grow.   It appears to have other healthy leaves so as long as the center spear continues to grow it should be OK.  These palms grow pretty fast so I would expect to see movement in a couple of days.

For photo #2 it does appear to have some offsets which makes me think that you have a Caryota mitis which is a clumping species.  You could cut off the offsets but the main stalk will die shortly after it flowers and sets seed in some years.  If you leave the offsets then they continue to grow so the palm continues to grow.  Space is limited for your situation so there are better palms you could try there.  Looks like you've got one flowering now!  Hope this is helpful.

Jon

[miss.gypsea]

Hi John,

Thank you for your reply!

I have found out that you are correct in that they are Caryota Mitis.

I will mark the center spear on #1 to see if it grows as you suggested. I did do that on the other smaller palms and I see daily growth so I will give that a shot on this big palm and keep my fingers crossed! I guess I didn't realize a center spear could be so massive and I thought I was maybe looking at a chopped crown. But I'm new to this! If it survived I will consider it a miracle!

Looks like we will have a lot more of these palms in the future! And like you said, they sure grow fast.

 

Thanks!

[Steve Mac]

Fusca, in my experience with my C. mitis, all of the stems, shoots, offsets, whatever all died at the same time as the 25 year old, oldest trunk. I have posted years ago in another thread an offset shoot, one foot high, flowering and dying with the rest of the clump. The only things to survive were the hundreds of seeds that are still coming up a year or two or three after I cut it down, because all the stems died, as you said after flowering. Only the seeds lived, none of the original clump from 25 ft  to 1 ft. tall.  But it took 25 years to flower and die. And it actually took quite a while to die after it started to flower, from top to bottom, sequentially, (a couple of years at least) I forget. 

Despite the fact that it will eventually die after flowering, l think that my mitis was one of the best palms that I have had in my garden, and I have over 60 species. Why because it does not drop leaves, it is not too massive to (eventually, 20 odd years later) remove yourself,  it is no maintenance and looks so distinctive and different and beautiful.

Fusca, your advice is good, I'm just saying that all of the clump will die together, eventually, at the same time the young shoots too.

 

 

[Fusca]

6 hours ago, gtsteve said:

Fusca, in my experience with my C. mitis, all of the stems, shoots, offsets, whatever all died at the same time as the 25 year old, oldest trunk. I have posted years ago in another thread an offset shoot, one foot high, flowering and dying with the rest of the clump. The only things to survive were the hundreds of seeds that are still coming up a year or two or three after I cut it down, because all the stems died, as you said after flowering. Only the seeds lived, none of the original clump from 25 ft  to 1 ft. tall.  But it took 25 years to flower and die. And it actually took quite a while to die after it started to flower, from top to bottom, sequentially, (a couple of years at least) I forget. 

Despite the fact that it will eventually die after flowering, l think that my mitis was one of the best palms that I have had in my garden, and I have over 60 species. Why because it does not drop leaves, it is not too massive to (eventually, 20 odd years later) remove yourself,  it is no maintenance and looks so distinctive and different and beautiful.

Fusca, your advice is good, I'm just saying that all of the clump will die together, eventually, at the same time the young shoots too.

 

 

Steve,

Interesting to hear that your entire palm flowered and died at the same time!  I think that's the exception and not typical.  Sorry you had to experience that.  Everything that I've read about them from Palmpedia to Phil's Jungle Music website says that only the flowering stalk will die and the others will continue living.  I wonder what caused yours to have all the stalks flower and die at the same time?  I've heard of some larger Caryota flowering prematurely shortly after planting from a large nursery box but not the case with yours.  At least you got 25 years of enjoyment from it!

Jon

[miss.gypsea]

Very informative thread, thanks to you both. 

I marked the spear about 36 hours ago. So far no movement, but I will hope for some movement while remaining realistic about it. I'm also going to measure all of the other mature fishtail spears here as well because if I think about it, with this heat and how they were being watered (very shallow) it seems very likely that they are in a very questionable state and that no water likely reached their roots for a long time because it evaporated first.  The rains are now here in full force, hopefully its not too late.

How drought tolerant are these palm? Do you know? I suppose there are many factors that would determine that. These are not connected to any below ground water sources I'm pretty sure, because they were just put on the property about 8 mos ago.

They've been put through the ringer in other ways with a turf fertilizer put down by a gardener (which I read should not be used near palms) and heavy insecticide spray done by that same gardener that likely leached into the roots the spray was so heavy. I read that fishtail roots are finicky to chemicals?

In learning more about these trees and looking at the size of them, I'm thinking they must be quite mature - they must be about 15 feet tall. I also see some other new clump formations growing in the soil near this questionable palm, that said, this palm is within about 8 inches of 2 other mature fishtail palms which makes me also very curious about how the space is going to work out in the future if they do survive and each bear shoots.

I guess ultimately only time will reveal their fate, I'm just trying to learn about them as the clock ticks!

[Fusca]

11 hours ago, miss.gypsea said:

 

I guess ultimately only time will reveal their fate, I'm just trying to learn about them as the clock ticks!

Good luck Heather - I hope that one recovers for you!  Let us know what happens.  

Edited May 15, 2020 by Fusca