How Is A Palm, Dead For Years, Still Alive?

[Jim in Los Altos]

This Chamaedorea tepejelote “died” of a bud rot seventeen years ago. No top growth whatsoever since then yet its trunk is still green and very much living. It’s a mystery to me how this is even possible. I will leave it alone as long as it stays green just to see how many more years it can keep going this way. 

[Las Palmas Norte]

That's crazy. Kinda defies logic really.

[WaianaeCrider]

I have a Chambeyronia macrocarpa where the gowning bud died about 2 years ago after 2 years in the ground.  Thee are still two green fronds hanging on??????????????????

[richnorm]

I have a C. metalica which was chewed off by a sheep about 15 years ago and, like yours, it lives on as a green stump!

[Phoenikakias]

Time for it to go anyway...

[Than]

Reminds me of a Rhaphidophora cutting I took once. It stayed green but refused to grow roots or leaves for many months until one day, just when I was about to throw it away, it started growing roots vigorously. 

[Rivera]

I recall reading about tree stumps in forests being kept alive by the forest itself, dependent on their connections to other trees and all interconnected by a complex mycorrhizal network, having long since lost their ability to feed themselves. 

I think this was in Peter Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees, in which case the subject was probably European hardwood forest like beech. There's a chance though that I read about it in Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life.

Who knows?

[Xerarch]

Perhaps that green trunk is still providing some photosynthesis? If it's green, it's photosynthetic, like the branches of palo verde.

On another note, even though it has been many decades since Chestnut Blight obliterated the once billions of American Chestnuts in North American forests, there are still living roots that push up new growth from time to time, that new growth is then infected with the blight and dies off, but it's amazing to me that the roots are still alive

[rizla023]

It enjoys the view of your garden so much it doesn't want to leave

[DoomsDave]

@Jim in Los Altos yeah, that's creepy isn't it?

I've had a number of palms do that, especially Chamadoreas. Tepejilote seems especially likely to do that.

Thinking about it, though, there's no reason for it to die. The growing point's gone, but the roots are still there, doing their thing. The plant just won't get any taller. It's got green in the stem so it still photosynthesizes.

On the other hand, most palms that lose their tips do die. Behead them, and it's over. I had a Chambeyronia that got a kink in its systems in the bud, the bud died and the rest of the plant did too.