Help me identify variety/locale of Dioon edule

[Mauro]

Hi, I picked up these two edules about a month ago, they were growing in a dilapidated greenhouse, getting "some" direct sun

I put them in full spring sun at home and pondered where to plant them. The larger one's leaves got sun bleached, while the smaller one did not object at all and seems to be loving full direct sun that has gotten hotter over the days (location eastern mediterranean, sun hot, air dry)

Which got me thinking if they are different varieties or are the same with different traits/attributes individually.

I think the smaller one is Palma sola, while I am not sure about the larger one 

ID's would be appreciated, thanks, as well as any advice on sun tolerance of these vars 

[Tracy]

22 hours ago, Mauro said:

they were growing in a dilapidated greenhouse, getting "some" direct sun

I put them in full spring sun at home and pondered where to plant them. The larger one's leaves got sun bleached, while the smaller one did not object at all and seems to be loving full direct sun that has gotten hotter over the days (location eastern mediterranean, sun hot, air dry)

Which got me thinking if they are different varieties or are the same with different traits/attributes individually.

I think the smaller one is Palma sola, while I am not sure about the larger one 

ID's would be appreciated, thanks, as well as any advice on sun tolerance of these vars 

Wish I could provide a positive id for you on these, but I find the variations of Dioon edule to be a bit challenging to distinguish.  Some variations seem to have shorter leaflets than others but both of yours correspond roughly with what I am growing as the "Palma sola" form.  They very well may handle full sun in your climate but I can share that mine growing in partial sun have done fine (coastal mediterranean climate).  The "Palma sola" pictured below gets full early morning sun as nothing blocks it from the east, however the Howea palms adjacent to it create filtered light at midday and other palms are to it's west, filtering light later in the day.  It thrives, pushing out flushes each growing season, often holds a couple of healthy looking flushes and most years also pushes out a cone.  So you can definitely get by without a full sun position.  Hopefully someone familiar with the various forms of Dioon edule can help confirm your suspicion on the form.   

Welcome to Palmtalk too Mauro!

[Merlyn]

I am fuzzy on the different types of Edule too...despite having at least 10 big ones around the yard.  A couple of mine are clearly different than the "normal" Edule, being bluish with substantially longer leaves.  And I have one next to the driveway that is about 1/2 the leaf length of the others, and is probably Dioon Angustifolium (recently separated from Edule).  Since yours were in a shady location you might need to wait until the next full-sun flush to get a reliable ID.  My first thought on #1 is that it's a slightly stretched-out Angustifolium. 

Here's a good key to Dioon that might help: https://www.cycad.org/documents/Key-to-the-Species-of-Dioon.pdf