Texas Palms

[Wudman]

Here are my damaged Queen and Robelini Palms after the freeze. Temps went down to 19 degrees at one point in Katy, TX.  My Pindo Palms were unbothered.  I did not cover these btw.

[Xenon]

35 minutes ago, Wudman said:

Here are my damaged Queen and Robelini Palms after the freeze. Temps went down to 19 degrees at one point in Katy, TX.  My Pindo Palms were unbothered.  I did not cover these btw.

 

The queens look great for being planted two months ago from the clearance aisle. Way more resilient than most people think. Thanks for the update! 

[Chester B]

I have a Sabal dominguensis in a pot, and now after seeing what you all have shown you've made me rethink planting it.  I'll probably grow it on for a couple of years before attempting to plant it.  Too bad I thought they had similar hardiness to causiarum.

The two on the left are causiarum, middle is dominguensis and the two right ones are mexicana.

i was hoping to get these all planted this year. 

[Xenon]

5 minutes ago, Chester B said:

I have a Sabal dominguensis in a pot, and now after seeing what you all have shown you've made me rethink planting it.  I'll probably grow it on for a couple of years before attempting to plant it.  Too bad I thought they had similar hardiness to causiarum.

The two on the left are causiarum, middle is dominguensis and the two right ones are mexicana.

i was hoping to get these all planted this year. 

 

You need to put all of them in ground anyway imo. Sabal grows like 100x faster in the ground. 

[Chester B]

3 minutes ago, Xenon said:

You need to put all of them in ground anyway imo. Sabal grows like 100x faster in the ground. 

I know, and its not much of an exaggeration.  I planted some of my Sabals and others of the same species remained in pots and it was about 10 fronds in the ground versus 3 in the pot.  It's just that when you're dealing with behemoth palms you have to be sure about placing.  March I'm going to start planting again, I have a pretty large area I'm going to develop.  It already has a couple Sabal uresana and Butia planted in the lawn.  My plan is to make a wall of Sabals like Meg did to help slow down the winds coming into my yard.  

[Banana Belt]

37 minutes ago, Chester B said:

It's just that when you're dealing with behemoth palms you have to be sure about placing

So very true.  Nothing makes me more angry at myself than to plant something in the wrong place, but it is so pleasing to have planted something in the right place many years later

[Meangreen94z]

46 minutes ago, Chester B said:

I have a Sabal dominguensis in a pot, and now after seeing what you all have shown you've made me rethink planting it.  I'll probably grow it on for a couple of years before attempting to plant it.  Too bad I thought they had similar hardiness to causiarum.

The two on the left are causiarum, middle is dominguensis and the two right ones are mexicana.

i was hoping to get these all planted this year. 

I think they are nearly as trunk hardy, but a lot less leaf hardy. There was a thread from Joe At NTCHP several years ago where some of what he thought was causiarum turned out to dominguensis and he compared the two.

[Chester B]

30 minutes ago, Meangreen94z said:

I think they are nearly as trunk hardy, but a lot less leaf hardy. There was a thread from Joe At NTCHP several years ago where some of what he thought was causiarum turned out to dominguensis and he compared the two.

I'll have to look for that.  It's still a shame he closed up, he was a great source for palms and information.  I bought numerous palms from him back in the day.

[Meangreen94z]

3 minutes ago, Chester B said:

I'll have to look for that.  It's still a shame he closed up, he was a great source for palms and information.  I bought numerous palms from him back in the day.

I briefly searched before posting. I’ll try to find it tonight 

[Fusca]

1 hour ago, Chester B said:

I have a Sabal dominguensis in a pot, and now after seeing what you all have shown you've made me rethink planting it.

Those other posts make me wonder if their seedlings were thirsty prior to the freeze or something else in addition to the cold affected them.  I have a small domingensis seedling go unprotected through 27°F the past 3 winters without a scratch.  Doesn't seem like 2° colder would make that much of a difference but I've seen some strange things after freezes before.

[Robert Cade Ross]

17 hours ago, Keys6505 said:

Looks like we can't have recovery threads here anymore without getting banished to the Freeze Damage forum, so I'll put this here.   My low was 15 degrees per my neighbors waleather station 2 doors down.

A little disappointed that my protected Clara pulled today.  I hadn't even checked it because I didn't think there was any chance it had damage.  It had a string of regular T5 Xmas lights, a blanket and plastic.  It was wrapped for 5 days with highs in the 40's.  

Unprotected Decora looks great (all things considered) and spear is moving.

Protected A. Engleri was just tented with plastic with a halogen work light under.  Looking good so far except for the parts that touched plastic (ran out of blankets).  L. Chinensis next to it was unprotected and has previously recovered from 15 after Palmageddon.

Small L. Saribus only had a pyrex container flipped over it and it spear pulled.

Licuala Fordiana had a ceramic planter flipped over it with a strand of C9' loosely laid on the ground around it.  Looks good-ish but spear pulled which surprised me judging on looks alone.

Majesties look pretty good.  Strand of T5 lights, sheet, plastic.

I'll post some more when I get pics.

 

 

The ribbons that are at a church in Friendswood look better than yours although I guess being planted on the south side of a 40’ tall building helps 🤔😆

[Robert Cade Ross]

2 hours ago, Xenon said:

The queens look great for being planted two months ago from the clearance aisle. Way more resilient than most people think. Thanks for the update! 

I drove through Dickinson yesterday to get to league city and I was surprised to see almost all of the 2022- present planted queens had a handful of green hanging on to the fronds in mixed locations no collapsing fronds thankfully to I think they will be fine by the end of this year with full green crowns unless February decides torture us 🫣.

[Xenon]

14 minutes ago, Fusca said:

Those other posts make me wonder if their seedlings were thirsty prior to the freeze or something else in addition to the cold affected them.  I have a small domingensis seedling go unprotected through 27°F the past 3 winters without a scratch.  Doesn't seem like 2° colder would make that much of a difference but I've seen some strange things after freezes before.

To be fair I don't think your 27F is anywhere close to 25F in central Texas. Even if it's just 2 degrees, the duration of cold is probably a lot longer up there. Plus the ground temperature is a lot lower with less daytime heating.

Or maybe you have causiarum 🤣

[Fusca]

5 hours ago, Xenon said:

To be fair I don't think your 27F is anywhere close to 25F in central Texas. Even if it's just 2 degrees, the duration of cold is probably a lot longer up there. Plus the ground temperature is a lot lower with less daytime heating.

Or maybe you have causiarum 🤣

To your point, if we compare apples to apples, the seedlings' first winter in the ground was a fairly short duration freeze but the last two had no less than 10 hours below freezing.  All three freeze events here were preceded by a day in the upper 70's/low 80's shortly before.  I planted both species next to each other.  😆

[Keys6505]

6 hours ago, Robert Cade Ross said:

The ribbons that are at a church in Friendswood look better than yours although I guess being planted on the south side of a 40’ tall building helps 🤔😆

Are they pre-2021?  I know Palmageddon killed all the ones I knew about around here that saw 15 degrees so I was nervous this time around.

[amh]

I should have some pint sized Sabal causiarum available in the spring. The plants survived upper teens in containers under bare cedar elm canopy.

[Robert Cade Ross]

16 hours ago, Keys6505 said:

Are they pre-2021?  I know Palmageddon killed all the ones I knew about around here that saw 15 degrees so I was nervous this time around.

They were planted right after 2021 to replace 4 huge queens . They only really got 50% burn in December of 2022

there is another one in Pearland that was planted summer of 2021 it’s still alive too.

[Robert Cade Ross]

Perfect microclimate inside this apartment complex.Located in Clearlake 

[_nevi]

This freeze was quite weird in that there's lots of damage variation — but things overall look survivable. Even with the supposed 15°F @Keys6505 reported, the images shown still look quite good (for survivability).

I'm thinking the daytime warming (both the afternoon after snowfall, as well as day after) assisted in preventing the "worst case scenarios" for damage. However, we'll need to look to Louisiana, Mississippi, and other northern Gulf growers to confirm the theory (especially after single digit °Fs in a number of those areas).

[_nevi]

2 hours ago, Robert Cade Ross said:

Perfect microclimate inside this apartment complex.Located in Clearlake 

Was that taken today? And where in Clear Lake? 

Again, this freeze is so weird regarding damage presentation.

[Robert Cade Ross]

14 hours ago, _nevi said:

Was that taken today? And where in Clear Lake? 

Again, this freeze is so weird regarding damage presentation.

Yes it was taken the last 24 hours at a apartment complex right off of east medical center boulevard.

[amh]

Here are two different Brahea dulcis planted in my front yard, one has minor frost protection from an oak to its north and the other has only a small silver cenzio to its north. The palm without the frost protection burned when the night time temperatures fell below 25F, while the frost protected palm saw no damage. I did protect these two palms with water bottles and a tarp when the temperatures dropped into the low teens, so there is some burning where the fronds touched the tarp. The first picture is of the exposed palm and the second picture is the frost protected palm.

[thyerr01]

Arenga engleri near Westchase in Houston. Looks pretty good, several green offsets under the main plant.

[Ben G.]

3 hours ago, thyerr01 said:

Arenga engleri near Westchase in Houston. Looks pretty good, several green offsets under the main plant.

What kind of temps did this Aren't see? Upper teens?

[thyerr01]

Yes, its fairly exposed now too, although it probably got less snow than I did about 4.5 miles (7 km) to the SE. I'm not sure when it was planted, but it predates 2018 at least.

Also just noticed the nice anole to the right.

[Chester B]

Yeah the anoles are out in force. No sign of any geckos though. 

[ChrisA]

What do y’all make of this Sabal I saw on the north side of San Antonio yesterday? Just beefy sabal minor, or Brazoria? The base was really thick, seeds were also present. There were four of them in all. 

[Robert Cade Ross]

Ripped out my two queen palms today they looked lifeless and full of fungal infection in the crown 🫥.

replacing with mules next month 

[Fusca]

10 hours ago, ChrisA said:

What do y’all make of this Sabal I saw on the north side of San Antonio yesterday? Just beefy sabal minor, or Brazoria? The base was really thick, seeds were also present. There were four of them in all. 

I think I have seen these before (near the Rim?) and I think they're Sabal minor.  Lots of fruits!

[Fusca]

1 hour ago, Fusca said:

I think I have seen these before (near the Rim?) and I think they're Sabal minor.  Lots of fruits!

@ChrisA Shops at La Cantara?

[ChrisA]

They’re right next to the Corner Bakery in Stone Oak. Yes full of fruit for the taking! 

[Robert Cade Ross]

Broke my phones camera so sorry for the trash quality lol … But here is something interesting citrus wise (orange frost satsuma ) lost all but a single leaf after 17°F last month and is leafing out nicely now . Completely unprotected