Sabal uresana, a different sabal.

[Alberto]

Sabal uresana, commonly known as the Sonoran palmetto is a species that is native to the foothills of the Sierra Madre Ocidental in northwestern Mexico. It's habitat is very dry and I had concerns if it would thrive in my not so hot and year round humid subtropical climate ( 1600 mm rain/ year). I have two planted out in the garden. One grew better then the other. The young leaves are blue but the wax is slowly removed by the frequent rains.

[Fusca]

Beautiful palm plus the added bonus of being extremely drought and heat tolerant!

[Alberto]

Exactly, two "problems" I don't have here.... 😀

[bruce Steele]

Alberto, I have an uresana and it is slow , like one frond a year, but the parajubaea I have are fast. Were the palms planted at the same time? What parajubaea do you have ? I like your choice of palms for an exotic desert look. 

[Alberto]

7 hours ago, bruce Steele said:

Alberto, I have an uresana and it is slow , like one frond a year, but the parajubaea I have are fast. Were the palms planted at the same time? What parajubaea do you have ? I like your choice of palms for an exotic desert look. 

The Sabal uresana were planted a few years after the Parajubaea torallyi ( this in 2009). I have 9 Parajubaea torallyi var. torallyi ( a torallyi var. microcarpa died) and have also 7 P. sunkha. I also have seedlings of P. cocoides ( collected on the ground in Bogotá) that need to be transplanted to bigger pots.

[Jeff zone 8 N.C.]

Beautiful palms. Any idea at all why they grew at such different speeds?

[Alberto]

1 hour ago, Jeff zone 8 N.C. said:

Beautiful palms. Any idea at all why they grew at such different speeds?

I have no idea. The soil at both places is very similar. 

[sonoranfans]

My sabal uresana has been a medium grower  planted in 2012.  FIrst pic is late 2013, about 2 1/2 years after planting it as a just going palmate 5 gallon.

Today 11 years later it has about 11-12' trunk that with leaf bases on is about 3' thick.  Its a sturdy sabal that takes zone 8b and light fertilization and care.  First overall:

and a closeup of the trunk.  Fr scale pavestones are 11" length on oine side and 9" ont he other so 3 of them span 31"

 

[Alberto]

Your S. uresana look fantastic and grew a lot faster then my palms here! Mine are the same age and a lot smaller. Your winters are probably colder then mine, but summers are probably a lot warmer (?) Our warmest days in summer ( january) are 31 - 32⁰C , when everybody complains about the heat, but normally 25 - 27⁰C during the day.

[sonoranfans]

48 minutes ago, Alberto said:

Your S. uresana look fantastic and grew a lot faster then my palms here! Mine are the same age and a lot smaller. Your winters are probably colder then mine, but summers are probably a lot warmer (?) Our warmest days in summer ( january) are 31 - 32⁰C , when everybody complains about the heat, but normally 25 - 27⁰C during the day.

Winter low for the last 10 years is 30F, about -1C.  We have been above 2C for the low for the last 5 years and typically we only get one or two brief cold snaps of a day or two below to 5-6C degrees( I am converting to Celsius).  The grow season(soils above 65F is about 10-10 1/2 months here).  Summers are hot and humid with 45-55 inches rain a year (mosly between june and october).  SWO he ware hot and wet buyt with relatively dry winters.  I was growing a small uresana in arizona before I left in 2009.  They also do very well there.  I remember years ago Merrill Wilcox(RIP) had a massive uresana so they have been grown very well in florida.  One problem with uresana is availability, I had to mail order mine in 2011.  Mine is in sandy soil on top(which I ammended) but with clay/sand 2' down.  When I planted mine, I put very little organics in the soil mix, just 3" mulch on top every couple years.  The roots can get to water in the clay but the area is fast drain on top, never see a puddle there from rain.

[Phoenikakias]

Rumor has it that there are two ecotypes, one from inland and one on the coast, the latter being considerably more silver. Anyway mine is a tone bluer than other Sabal spp, in my case causiarum and rosei). This difference is especially visible during cloudy weather, when several spp grow closely to each other

Sabal uresana:

Sabal causiarum:

Colors are real.

To the left the uresana and to the right the other two spp

Also in my climate and soil S uresana had been surprisingly slow, in particular slower than the other two spp, which were acquired as seedlings, while uresana had been bought as a juvenile plant with already fan leaves. Not only former caught up with latter, but they have developed a trunk much sooner and have already started blooming.

Uresana has sped up a bit only after I had buried near it a 50 kg large dog (organics) and started dressing surrounding soil with sulfur pellets.

[redbeard917]

Phoenikakias, that is interesting. For comparison, Serenoa repens is the same: the silver variety occurs near the coast.

As you can see from sonoranfans specimen, they do well in Florida with our heat, humidity, and rain. I saw one at a home in Tallahassee with over 10 feet of trunk which had a peculiar feature: the boots didn't turn brown, but retained their blue-green color all the way down to the ground. That specimen had a trunk about as wide as Sabal palmetto can get, but the one at Gizella Kopsick Palm Arboretum is an absolute giant. Easily the widest trunk on any Sabal I've ever seen.

[Fusca]

6 hours ago, Phoenikakias said:

Rumor has it that there are two ecotypes, one from inland and one on the coast, the latter being considerably more silver. 

If the rumor's true I believe it's the other way around.  The coastal form is what I had growing in San Antonio with the same gun-metal blue color similar to yours.  The highlands form is silver similar to Brahea armata and supposedly more cold hardy from 1,000m elevation in the mountains of Sonora.  @iamjv has posted photos of his silver palm that are incredible.  There's also photos from Peckerwood Gardens with some very silver uresana also.

 

[Silas_Sancona]

8 hours ago, Phoenikakias said:

Rumor has it that there are two ecotypes, one from inland and one on the coast, the latter being considerably more silver. Anyway mine is a tone bluer than other Sabal spp, in my case causiarum and rosei). This difference is especially visible during cloudy weather, when several spp grow closely to each other

Sabal uresana:

Sabal causiarum:

Colors are real.

To the left the uresana and to the right the other two spp

Also in my climate and soil S uresana had been surprisingly slow, in particular slower than the other two spp, which were acquired as seedlings, while uresana had been bought as a juvenile plant with already fan leaves. Not only former caught up with latter, but they have developed a trunk much sooner and have already started blooming.

Uresana has sped up a bit only after I had buried near it a 50 kg large dog (organics) and started dressing surrounding soil with sulfur pellets.

Yep,  two forms..   Maybe specimens that fall somewhere in between growing in some foothill areas between the two main areas in Sonora.

When you look over the iNat map of documented observations, very easy to see where each grows.. Very distinct climatological differences between the two areas.. Look up: Nacapule Canyon, and Yecora region flora..






Muted a tad perhaps here due to pretty benign growing conditions but differences between the two forms are easy to see when growing next to one another.. With or without glasses.

[sonoranfans]

yeah I expect the desert adaptation is the one with the more blue form as it makes sense evolution wise.  The wax lowers leaf heating and subsequent transpiration making the blue one a better desert survivor.  As far as serenoa repens silver and green, might be an adaptation to soil.  My blue/silver serenoa are from south carolina, all 6 of them.  They have a more silver color than the local silvers you see after coming south over the skyway bridge.  Seems like inland florida has many more green than silver ones but green ones are near the coast, though I haven't seen them mixed with silver.  I would offer a hypothesis that sandy soil may lead to the silver adaptation/evolution as the waxy leaf helps lower transpiration which can also be a problem in sandy soils where roots struggle to get enough water at times.  Might be they evolved in different soil types long ago.  On the bluest sabal uresanas, mine came from tejas tropicals in texas called "icy blue", but it was never close to the blue uresana at university of arizona.  I had a small sabal arizona in arizona, it was very blue.  Might be some species of blue palms add or drop leaf wax/color depending on their environment.