best palms for socal public food forest?

[epiphyte]

just outside my friend's community in sylmar (san fernando valley) is an overgrown "oasis" that i recently started adding fruiting plants to along with some support species (ie nitrogen fixers).  throughout the year there's a trickle of irrigation runoff that provides enough water for a dozen full grown willow trees, several large fan palms, an elm tree and other weedy species.  

in the past couple months i've planted more than a dozen fruiting size trees as well as numerous seedlings.  

so far the only palm i've planted is a small green butia odorata...
 

 

in the same hole i also put a couple small seedlings... jackfruit and surinam cherry... which will thrive in the unlikely case that the spot happens to be too wet for the palm.  putting multiple species in the same hole helps me hedge my bets.  plus, thanks to fungi, plants trade resources with their nearest neighbors, which facilitates greater productivity and growth.  so ideally all three will make it.  

i'd love to add more palms to the oasis so recently i started making a list of palms with edible fruit and/or nuts...

Bactris ferruginea
Jubaea chilensis 
Jubaeopsis caffra 
Scheelea phalerata
Syagrus coronata
Syagrus macrocarpa
Syagrus vermicularis 
Syagrus x matafome

which of these might work best in the oasis?  any others that you'd suggest?  

feel free to suggest non-palms as well.  

personally my primary goal is for the oasis to provide the public with the opportunity to taste fruits and nuts that they are unlikely to find in the supermarket.   

if anyone would like to visit just pm me.  

 

[WagnerMX]

Bactris palms are usually spiny. I have no problems with spiny palms, but your public might have a different opinion.

 

Do you know Raindance seeds? Fruit growers from the US sometimes refer to him (I have no experience) and he isn't located far from you.

[epiphyte]

i recently sowed some seeds that i purchased from raindance...

diospyros californica (baja chocolate persimmon/sapote)
passiflora palmeri
passiflora pentaschista (desert passionfruit)
prosopis pubescens  (screwbean mesquite)
ziziphus parryi (desert jujube)

mostly drier growers for the food forest.  the mesquite and ziziphus are spiny, like many other plants from subtropical and tropical dry forests.  i'd love to grow many different stenocereus (pitaya) species in the food forest.  never tried the fruit before but it sure sounds delicious.  i'm guessing you've eaten some?  

over a year ago in costa rica i jumped up and gave a big hi-5 to a acrocomia vinífera palm (don't ask why, i plead the 5th).  somehow i didn't notice the massive spines.  i still haven't regained the full range of motion on the pointer finger on my right hand.  who can i blame?  

the other day i was at a nursery with a big spiny pereskia with relatively large yellow green fruit on the plant and on the ground. i picked one from the tree, that was kinda yellow, and a bit sunburned. i opened it up and thought to myself, all cactus fruit are edible, right? i took a small nibble and regretted it for the next 3 or so hours. my throat was extremely scratchy and uncomfortable. i want to say that the fruit wasn't ripe enough, but the seeds were black and big. they looked perfectly viable. or maybe the sunburn had some effect. afterwards i did some googling and am guessing it's pereskia grandifolia. no obvious information about edibility.  who can i blame?

people always want someone to blame.  maybe all around the food forest there should be big signs "danger, warning, spiny food forest.  everything isn't edible".   

found a few more palm species that i'd like to add to the list i posted, which i can't seem to edit?  guess i'll post the entire list here...

Aiphanes horrida
Aiphanes minima
Astrocaryum huaimi
Astrocaryum vulgare
Bactris ferruginea
Bactris setosa
Brahea armata
Brahea dulcis
Brahea edulis
Butia catarinensis 
Butia eriospatha 
Butia purpurascens
Butia yatay 
Euterpe edulis
Jubaea chilensis
Jubaeopsis caffra
Mauritiella armata
Oenocarpus distichus
Salacca? 
Scheelea phalerata
Syagrus botryophora
Syagrus coronata
Syagrus macrocarpa
Syagrus vagans
Syagrus vermicularis
Syagrus x matafome

[rprimbs]

Maybe I missed something.  Are you including date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera) ?

[WagnerMX]

7 hours ago, epiphyte said:

i'd love to grow many different stenocereus (pitaya) species in the food forest.  never tried the fruit before but it sure sounds delicious.  i'm guessing you've eaten some?

Yes, but they're not common where I live, sadly enough. As a food source, cacti are not as important here as in other regions of Mexico.

Salacca is usually spiny and dioecious. A species that I haven't spotted in your list is Eleiodoxa conferta, which is edible (but very acid), spiny, and dioecious. The CA climate might be bit on the cold side, however. They generally like hot and humid.

Also, the species in your list that I know of all produce edible fruit, but there also are palms that are cultivated for their inflorescence. Here locally, they use the inflorescences of "pacaya" (Chamaedorea tepejilote) as food. It is an easy-to-grow and fast-growing understory palm (here, at least). The inflorescence of Astrocaryum mexicanum is also used as food, but I've never tried it. However, inflorescences have to be cooked and can't be picked and eaten straight from the palm.

[epiphyte]

20 hours ago, rprimbs said:

Maybe I missed something.  Are you including date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera) ?

good point.  i should have mentioned in the op that the main goal for the food forest is to provide the public with the opportunity to taste locally grown fruits (nuts and veggies?) that they are unlikely to find in a typical local supermarket.  i've already broken this "rule" a few times.  recently i planted a blueberry and a boysenberry.  earlier i planted a prime ark blackberry.  they were overstock from my friend's nursery.  if she had any overstock date palms then i'd probably plant them.  another nursery friend has a date palm in the ground with fruits on it.  next time i visit i'll try and grab some seeds.  

[epiphyte]

@WagnerMX very very interesting about edible palm inflorescence.  never heard of that before!  a long time ago some very hungry people went around testing palm inflorescence for edibility?  i'm guessing that they didn't test all the palms?  

just now i googled for edible palm inflorescence and found this pdf... edible palms and their uses.   i had no idea that there were so many edible palms.  then the question is how many of them can be grown in the los angeles area.  

[PalmsInBaltimore]

it might be easier to list which palms aren't edible. One of the first agricultural plants was the date palm. The ancient egyptians grew it. Treats made with dates are extremely popular.

Coconuts are probably the most well known edible palm fruit.

heart of palm is very common. more of an ingredient than something specific to any one palm species. 

As for the food forest idea, I'm not sure how anyone would be able to pick the palm fruits once the trees get more than like 6 feet tall. and the ones with the best fruit have the biggest spines or, like coconuts, actually pose a risk of injury to people standing under them. They harvest coconuts with monkeys in Thailand for a reason

[Jonathan]

Parajubaea cocoides!