Cocos Nucifera in Monterrey, MX

[idontknowhatnametuse]

(This Is My First Post Ever)

 

I used to have 100+ screenshots of different coconut palms (over 110) growing in Monterrey, Mexico. Sadly I lost all of them. Most of those palms are probably dead by now anyways because of the February 2021 freeze. these are some that I could remember. Bonus Attalea Sp screenshot at the end. (Also in Monterrey)

 

Killed by the freeze

Killed by the freeze (2)

The state of this one is unknown, most likely alive.

 

This one is alive and it never gets cold damage, last year it snowed and it was like nothing happened.

Unknown state (2)

Unknown state (3)

Unknown state (4)

Unknown state (3) (This is an Attalea)

 

 

 

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Correction, the attalea is the 5th unknown state palm, not the 3rd. I probably misclicked since I'm on a phone.

[GottmitAlex]

Wow nice! Welcome to PalmTalk!

Do you know if any of those coconuts we're fruiting (had nuts)?

How bad was the 2021 freeze over there? 

Doesn't it freeze yearly in Monterey?

[pohonkelapa]

21 minutes ago, GottmitAlex said:

Wow nice! Welcome to PalmTalk!

Do you know if any of those coconuts we're fruiting (had nuts)?

How bad was the 2021 freeze over there? 

Doesn't it freeze yearly in Monterey?

If there are coconut palms growing there then i doubt it freezes.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

56 minutes ago, GottmitAlex said:

Wow nice! Welcome to PalmTalk!

Do you know if any of those coconuts we're fruiting (had nuts)?

How bad was the 2021 freeze over there? 

Doesn't it freeze yearly in Monterey?

Hello Alex, Thanks.

 

Yes, most of those coconut palms were fruiting. in fact, the ones in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th photos had fruits. I also remember taking a screenshot of a dwarf variety loaded with fruits but I forgot the location of it, also a really tall one that I also forgot the location of it.

Edited April 29, 2022 by idontknowhatnametuse

[idontknowhatnametuse]

And talking about the freezes, last year we got -8C° and a lot of snow,  I had 2 young coconut palms too, one bought in a nursery and another one brought sprouted from cozumel, they both got fried. I had a dictyosperma album seedling too that became slow-growing and eventually died. we got something like that in 2017 too, it was like -3C°, it rarely goes below 2C°.

Edited April 29, 2022 by idontknowhatnametuse

[GottmitAlex]

9 minutes ago, idontknowhatnametuse said:

And talking about the freezes, last year we got -8C° and a lot of snow,  I had 2 young coconut palms too, one bought in a nursery and another one brought sprouted from cozumel, they both got fried. I had a dictyosperma album seedling too that became slow-growing and eventually died. we got something like that in 2017 too, it was like -3C°, it rarely goes below 2C°.

Wow. Sorry to hear that.

How long had the young cocos been planted? 

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

1 minute ago, GottmitAlex said:

Wow. Sorry to hear that.

How long had the young cocos been planted? 

 

One had been planted since late summer 2018, it was doing really well, the one from cozumel since mid-summer 2019 and it was growing like a weed.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Here's another palm that also died in the freeze

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

While the palm died, some other trees didn't care about the freeze like pseudobombax ellipticum (pink variety) located near the area where the palm above was. they just didn't bloom in 2021 but here's a photo from this year and they're really healthy. There's a lot of pseudobombax trees in that area.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2022 by idontknowhatnametuse

[richtrav]

Oh boy, wait until Mr Coconut Palm sees these, this is going to be a big thread! 

I have not been to Monterrey lately but was in Tamaulipas last fall and this winter, there are some living coconuts as far north as Matamoros, the best one around here I’ve seen is in Valle Hermoso. How did the royal palms do there? Do you go by that Attalea very often? It’s a beauty. And do any nurseries sell coconuts from Tampico or San Luis Potosí?

The minimum temperatures around Monterrey are going to be all over the map, with the mountains, different elevations, and a huge urban heat island. Still, it can get cold even in the middle of town. 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

12 hours ago, richtrav said:

Oh boy, wait until Mr Coconut Palm sees these, this is going to be a big thread! 

I have not been to Monterrey lately but was in Tamaulipas last fall and this winter, there are some living coconuts as far north as Matamoros, the best one around here I’ve seen is in Valle Hermoso. How did the royal palms do there? Do you go by that Attalea very often? It’s a beauty. And do any nurseries sell coconuts from Tampico or San Luis Potosí?

The minimum temperatures around Monterrey are going to be all over the map, with the mountains, different elevations, and a huge urban heat island. Still, it can get cold even in the middle of town. 

I've never been to Tamaulipas but I've seen street views from Matamoros and indeed it has coconut palms. I have never seen that attalea in person, I just randomly found it while trying to search for coconuts 2 years ago in google maps. And about royals, they do really well and they recovered. They are actually becoming really popular here lately.

 

This one looks like it's from 2018-2019 but the palm this year is growing really nicely.

This one looks like a 2020 street view because there used to be a really tall royal among these ones but it was cut down in that year.

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Not a palm but here's a Terminalia Catappa (Indian Almond) that died during the freeze, The owners replaced it with another Terminalia Catappa some weeks ago.

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Another coconut palm, I saw this one in person multiple times before it died by the freeze too.

 

The same palm when it was young in 2009

[idontknowhatnametuse]

And another one in the back part of a house (2017) The palm eventually died.

 

 

 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Last find of the day, This palm that I only saw in person once in 2018 which survived the freeze.

Transplanted in 2009 as a trunking palm

Street View from august 2021, it's pulling some leaves, so it survived.

[bubba]

Cool

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Update of the Attalea which I assume was a butyracea, possibly died in the december 2022 freeze. It looks like it tried to recover though but it wasn't paid enough attention.

However, there is still one Attalea (Juvenile) left in Montemorelos. I hope it survived. I also have a small A. butyracea which is just starting to push V shaped leaves.

[SFLP48584]

I've noticed in the photos that the Mexican tall coconut cultivar's fronds are very long and erect (not arching/recurved/etc.).

[SFLP48584]

[SFLP48584]

1 minute ago, SFLP48584 said:

This example has very long and somewhat straight fronds.  Likely a Mexican tall.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

1 hour ago, SFLP48584 said:

This example has very long and somewhat straight fronds.  Likely a Mexican tall.

Yes, it looks like it.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

1 hour ago, SFLP48584 said:

This example has very long and somewhat straight fronds.  Likely a Mexican tall.

I also documented most of the coconut palms in Monterrey, and around Nuevo León in iNaturalist. All of them are coconuts, I corrected all of the incorrect ID's of queen palms, washingtonias, etc.

https://www.naturalista.mx/taxa/48865-Cocos-nucifera

[idontknowhatnametuse]

A mature survivor (2022)

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Another one

[Joaco]

Do you know if they get any protection in winter? If so what do they use?

[Joaco]

I can see some green in the photo where it says 2022 mature survivor so it looks like a Panama Tall and the one below has some bronze in it. Is it a golden Malay?

[idontknowhatnametuse]

12 hours ago, Joaco said:

Do you know if they get any protection in winter? If so what do they use?

The mature speciemens never got protected because their owners probably don't even know they are coconut palms, they just view them as palm trees. All of these saw -4C in 2021. I do protect mine but not heavily, I put something warm around it like a blanket and cover it with felt. I had a juvenile golden malayan in 2021 that died in that freeze because I didn't knew a freeze was coming and it wasn't protected because it never got damaged in previous winters because there were no freezes below -1C.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

3 hours ago, Joaco said:

I can see some green in the photo where it says 2022 mature survivor so it looks like a Panama Tall and the one below has some bronze in it. Is it a golden Malay?

Both look like tall speciemens to me, they have that fat area in their trunk base that tall varieties tend to have.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

3 hours ago, Joaco said:

I can see some green in the photo where it says 2022 mature survivor so it looks like a Panama Tall and the one below has some bronze in it. Is it a golden Malay?

These ones in the downtown Monterrey were dwarfs though, you can see they even set fruit. But the 2021 freeze killed them.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

3 hours ago, Joaco said:

I can see some green in the photo where it says 2022 mature survivor so it looks like a Panama Tall and the one below has some bronze in it. Is it a golden Malay?

There's also this young new one in a public park in escobedo, I hope it fairs well. Looks like it likes being in full sun.

[Joaco]

That’s great. I am really hoping for those coconuts to grow good. I’m also in that journey of planting coconuts and hoping they survive. In Mexico City we are getting tons of rain finally, I had to water the plants like mango, mamey, plantain, banana, avocado, other fruit trees plus the coconuts with recycled water for them to grow good.

[idontknowhatnametuse]

Some new ones I found except the one in the second photo, in 2016 it was still a seedling that was starting to go pinnate, I didn't expect it to survive and grow that fast but it did. Not all of them are in Monterrey, some of these are in other cities around the state of Nuevo Leon.

[Joaco]

Wow seems to me that the ones that do best are Panama talls?

[idontknowhatnametuse]

44 minutes ago, Joaco said:

Wow seems to me that the ones that do best are Panama talls?

Some of them are talls and some of them look like dwarves, I don't know what's the cold hardiest dwarf but there should be one that could have similar cold hardiness of a tall. Mine's doing very well, though it's not very fast because it's not in a particularly sunny spot.

[Axel Amsterdam]

Wonderful pictures, are the red/orange petioled nucifera usually cold/cool hardier in your area? Or are petiole colors not a reliable indicator for distinguishing types of nucifera?

[idontknowhatnametuse]

4 minutes ago, Axel Amsterdam said:

Wonderful pictures, are the red/orange petioled nucifera usually cold/cool hardier in your area? Or are petiole colors not a reliable indicator for distinguishing types of nucifera?

Petiole color doesn't secure cold hardiness, though in my experience, Golden malayan dwarf and orange panama tall have been much more hardier than a green malayan dwarf I used to have. I have also seen green petiole palms survive while yellow-ish petiole palms died.

[Axel Amsterdam]

Thanks, i live in a climate which doesnt permit coconuts planted outside ofcourse but i am very surprised how perfect my orange petioled nucifera looks while its been barely 15C during the day, often cloudy and below 10C at night, sometimes 5C or 6C even. It still slowly grows and the fronds look perfect after several weeks of this type of fall weather. 

 

[Joaco]

Where do you get your coconuts from?

Because you are in Monterrey right?

I can get some Panama tall, yellow Malayan dwarfs and some maypan talls in Madre Selva street in Xochimilco 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

48 minutes ago, Joaco said:

Where do you get your coconuts from?

Because you are in Monterrey right?

I can get some Panama tall, yellow Malayan dwarfs and some maypan talls in Madre Selva street in Xochimilco 

I used to buy coconuts from local nurseries but I got this one from a beach in isla mujeres, it was in a mountain of sprouted coconuts and I didn't know which one to pick. At the end I ended choosing that one (Orange panama tall).