Yellowing spears on Sylvester palm

[jdl]

Can someone help diagnose this problem on my Sylvester?
I had 2 Sylvester’s planted last august and they were growing great until it started to get cold. They suffered a lot from the freezing weather and turned mostly brown except for the middle. I just trimmed off the brown fronds the other day.
Found that all the spears in the middle of one of my palms are yellowing and have some brown, and the spears aren’t opened when they should be. That tree does take in a lot of water. Could it be from too much water? Or maybe boron or manganese deficiency? Or some other deficiency? 

[ChrisA]

Looks to me like just cold damage to the newest most tender growth when the cold affected it.  I’d monitor and see how it goes as more new fronds come out.  The fact that it is actively growing is a good sign, and it doesn’t appear that there is any rot notable.  How cold did you get this winter? Perhaps some of those newer fronds will darken a more green color once exposed to more sun.  I’d expect they would start opening soon, but perhaps got too damaged.  
 

 

[jdl]

5 minutes ago, ChrisA said:

Looks to me like just cold damage to the newest most tender growth when the cold affected it.  I’d monitor and see how it goes as more new fronds come out.  The fact that it is actively growing is a good sign, and it doesn’t appear that there is any rot notable.  How cold did you get this winter? Perhaps some of those newer fronds will darken a more green color once exposed to more sun.  I’d expect they would start opening soon, but perhaps got too damaged.  
 

 

Well the spears are actually from before winter. So I don’t think the fronds are actively growing yet, but it just started getting warm so maybe it will start soon. It has dates actively growing though. It got into the 20s and was raining in the 30s. My palms went from green to brown in a week from the cold. But I feel like the yellowing isn’t from the cold because cold damaged fronds go from green straight to brown, no yellow. 

[JLM]

Its probably fine. Looks like its flowering too which is another sign that its fine. It might be better to cut those flowers off so the palm can work on pushing out new fronds.

[ChrisA]

On 3/17/2022 at 5:33 PM, jdl said:

Well the spears are actually from before winter. So I don’t think the fronds are actively growing yet, but it just started getting warm so maybe it will start soon. It has dates actively growing though. It got into the 20s and was raining in the 30s. My palms went from green to brown in a week from the cold. But I feel like the yellowing isn’t from the cold because cold damaged fronds go from green straight to brown, no yellow. 

Agreed that the flowering is a good sign. Wishing you luck and hoping that this warm weather will help get the new growth going and green! Please keep us up to date, would love to see it starting to thrive.

-Chris