Chambeyronia 'Houailou' New Red Leaf

[PalmatierMeg]

Went out the back door to find this greeting in the jungle.

[realarch]

Well grown Meg! Nice wake-up call.

Tim

[ellidro]

Beautifully grown Meg! Looks like a hookeri to me and not a houialou.

[PalmatierMeg]

It was sold to me as Houailou and has been a slow, steady grower. Funny thing is that I've tried Chambeyronia Hookeris as part of my Chambeyronia grove maybe 20' away and every one of them eventually declined and croaked.

'

[The Germinator]

Hi Meg, thanks for all the perks on my order. What are the morphalogical differences for  houialou. ......  It looks like the trunk has a more lime green tone to it. I just added a blonde hookerii to my grove... now I have three in that spot now.

[realarch]

I thought C. houailou had the green abaxial petiole and C. hookeri had the darker, brownish coloration. Somebody here should know.

Tim  

[ellidro]

I have several hookeri and some have green petioles and some have brown. To me the tell tale sign is the stiffness of the leaflets. While Chambey in general are fairly stiff leafed, houialou are even more so! That being said growing conditions can change what a palm looks like so maybe the diff between FL and CA are on display here. Hard to really tell from the pics posted. 

[realarch]

1 hour ago, ellidro said:

I have several hookeri and some have green petioles and some have brown. To me the tell tale sign is the stiffness of the leaflets. While Chambey in general are fairly stiff leafed, houialou are even more so! That being said growing conditions can change what a palm looks like so maybe the diff between FL and CA are on display here. Hard to really tell from the pics posted. 

Thanks for the reply!

Tim

[Tracy]

3 hours ago, ellidro said:

I have several hookeri and some have green petioles and some have brown. To me the tell tale sign is the stiffness of the leaflets. While Chambey in general are fairly stiff leafed, houialou are even more so! That being said growing conditions can change what a palm looks like so maybe the diff between FL and CA are on display here. Hard to really tell from the pics posted. 

I like your assessment even though my 3 C hookeri have the brown color petioles.  My C houialou is near a walkway and is at the size where one of the fronds was right at eye level before being tied up out of the way.  I can attest that it has much more rigid and leathery leaflets than a C macrocarpa or the hookeri form, which in my limited experience are very similar in both texture and rigidness to one another.  Your comment about environmental conditions potentially playing a role is also a good point.

Another possibility is that if the seed is coming from gardens outside habitat could there be some hybridization and consequent intermediary specimens between hookeri and houailou at some point which would exhibit a combination of features from both.  I'm not insinuating that this specimen is or isn't C houailou, just making the observation on how things can get complicated as we get plants from collections that have closely related species growing in close proximity it becomes difficult to rule out hybrids popping up occasionally.

[James B]

If you look at the width of the leaflets you can see is Houailou not Hookeri. At that size if it was a Hookeri the leaflets would be wider than a man’s hand.