Dypsis pembana

[Xenon]

Thought I'd post an updated pic from the one in post #20. There is a water bottle at the base for scale.

The clump provides a nice screen from the drive.

Tim

D_pembana.jpg

Amazing! What's the red leaved foliage plant in the background?

Thanks!

[realarch]

Jonathan, it's a Heliconia indica. Stunning plant too.

Tim

[RedRabbit]

I've noticed my friends keep breaking... This palm doesn't tolerate the wind well, does it?

[Tracy]

6 hours ago, RedRabbit said:

I've noticed my friends keep breaking... This palm doesn't tolerate the wind well, does it?

Sorry about your friends .  I guess it depends on how much wind you are referring to.  I have several planted in various exposures and not had any issues with any fronds ever breaking.  Leaflets can get beat up in high winds and tear some, but no different than D lanceolata.  That said, you may have significantly stronger winds in Tampa.  What sort of wind speeds caused the problem and how big is your your pembana?

[DoomsDave]

On 5/30/2013, 9:29:08, MattyB said:

Here's that D. pembana update from the beginning of this thread. It took a while to get going but now it's got several rings of trunk and is growing strong.

Is the dog Frog?

[RedRabbit]

16 hours ago, Tracy said:

Sorry about your friends .  I guess it depends on how much wind you are referring to.  I have several planted in various exposures and not had any issues with any fronds ever breaking.  Leaflets can get beat up in high winds and tear some, but no different than D lanceolata.  That said, you may have significantly stronger winds in Tampa.  What sort of wind speeds caused the problem and how big is your your pembana?

It is still pretty small, 3G size if I'm not mistaken. I'm guessing the wind would have been no higher than 20mph lately.

[Tracy]

2 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

It is still pretty small, 3G size if I'm not mistaken. I'm guessing the wind would have been no higher than 20mph lately.

I wouldn't worry then if they are still relatively small.  This is one of my taller ones, which has seen well in excess of 20mph with orchids on a stick hanging off fronds without ever breaking any fronds.  Unless there are other signs of a problem, I would suggest just being patient.

[RedRabbit]

22 minutes ago, Tracy said:

I wouldn't worry then if they are still relatively small.  This is one of my taller ones, which has seen well in excess of 20mph with orchids on a stick hanging off fronds without ever breaking any fronds.  Unless there are other signs of a problem, I would suggest just being patient.

Thanks! 

[Tracy]

I noticed a "doinker" coming off the side of one of my Dypsis pembana and was a bit surprised.  I have seen and experienced this with Dypsis lutescens, but never with D pembana.  Down lower at the base of a trunk is normal for a new trunk to emerge in my experience, but this is the first I've seen with pembana emerging this far up the trunk.  The blocks are 8x8x16's for perspective, so where it is trying to emerge is about 16" or two blocks high.  Anyone seen this with D pembana before?

[realarch]

Tracy, it's doink city on my D. pembanas, but they harden off and turn into big knobs. They do more than a good job 

suckering from the base though, vigorous clumpers.

Tim

[Tracy]

13 hours ago, realarch said:

Tracy, it's doink city on my D. pembanas, but they harden off and turn into big knobs. They do more than a good job 

suckering from the base though, vigorous clumpers.

Tim

Thanks for sharing that Tim.  I only have one that is what I would call a "vigorous clumper", with 1/3 of mine (2 of 6 still solitairy), and they are infants anymore. 

[DoomsDave]

They're sure not vigorous clumpers for me. Whether it's an individual thing or a La Habra thing I don't know. I have about 5 - 6 plants, all about 10 - 12 feet (3 - 4 M) tall, with, at most a couple pups on each, and one remaining solitary. When conditions are right, they grow fast, but when they're not, they tend to just croak. Given what I've seen, I'm sure they like L-Cadia better than L-Habra, by a wide margin. Here, I've killed relatively large plants by putting out into the full sun. They definitely prefer a bit of shade in my 'hood.

 

 

[realarch]

I acquired two 1 gal. D. pembanas, oh geeze back in late '08 or early '09, and both were already suckering. Instead of planting just the

one, I thought.......oh, two would be better. Well, I don't know if that was such a wise decision, but glancing at the chainsaw, there is a solution.

They could use a bit of a thinning out though. 

Here are a few photos, and Tracy, some of the knobs. 

 

Tim

 

[Al in Kona]

Just sharing my Dypsis pembana.  We rarely have any issues with wind here on the Leeward Kona side but like anywhere, it can happen.  Last year we had one of those wind gust events and several green healthy leaves snapped off giving the tree an off balanced look for a while until new leaves grew out again.  So, yes, I'd say they can suffer from very strong wind. 

[sonoranfans]

those are some of th biggest I have seen Al, gorgeous palms!  Here is one of mine, I mentioned it earlier in the thread, its a solitary but branched above ground after it had a spear pull in dec 2010 as a 3 gallon in the ground for ~4 months.  Today it has about 11' clear trunk.  this one sees no late day sun on the trunk, but the crown is above the house so its getting some now.  Its shaded by kentiopsis O and caryota mitis and a royal to the east.

[Tracy]

1 hour ago, sonoranfans said:

its a solitary but branched above ground after it had a spear pull in dec 2010 as a 3 gallon in the ground for ~4 months.

Going back to my question, it appears that pushing out aborted new starts above the ground isn't too uncommon for Dypsis pembana, but actually creating a separate trunk like Dypsis lutescens often does is relatively unusual.  Some big beautiful clumps that Tim and Al have posted here growing on the Big Island!!

[sonoranfans]

17 hours ago, Tracy said:

Going back to my question, it appears that pushing out aborted new starts above the ground isn't too uncommon for Dypsis pembana, but actually creating a separate trunk like Dypsis lutescens often does is relatively unusual.  Some big beautiful clumps that Tim and Al have posted here growing on the Big Island!!

I havent seen one do this yet on palmtalk, branch above the soil, but then there are so many posts I havent read.  After the pear pull the new start came through a leafbase near the grow poiint, it looked like the original point was dead.  But then about 6 months later there was a spear that came out of the original point.  At this point the original point grew faster and the secondary grow point lagged.  But then over a year or two the secondary point kicked in to grow with the first.  The palm was totally defoliated and had a pulled spear, I had no reason to think it would survive.  But I dug it up, repotted the stem and some roots, and two others with similar damage and gave them weekly douses with peroxide and daconil every 2-3 weeks.  Two survived, one died, the other survivor was a multi and is growing more slowly in greater shade.

[foxtail]

Here's mine, doing the same, I think.

 

 

[Patrick Palms]

Planting a one year seedlings outside. As a guide, how deep should the hole be ?   And if you want a single palm, can clumping fronds be cut off , without harming the palm? 

[Josh-O]

one of my top 10 fav palms

[Moose]

On ‎7‎/‎11‎/‎2017‎ ‎2‎:‎28‎:‎22‎, realarch said:

I acquired two 1 gal. D. pembanas, oh geeze back in late '08 or early '09, and both were already suckering. Instead of planting just the

one, I thought.......oh, two would be better. Well, I don't know if that was such a wise decision, but glancing at the chainsaw, there is a solution.

They could use a bit of a thinning out though. 

Here are a few photos, and Tracy, some of the knobs. 

 

Tim

 

That is really fast. Can't think of a faster Dypsis.

[PalmatierMeg]

This is a great palm. It takes full sun, my hot humid summers and cold to at least the upper-20s with only a cold spot or two. It clusters very sparingly. My two adult palms suffered frond breakage from Hurricane Irma but otherwise withstood the storm and stayed solid and have recovered nicely except for a dangling broken frond or two that will eventually fall on their own. This species makes D. cabadae & lanceolata look like wimps.

[Tracy]

On 4/27/2018, 8:21:30, PalmatierMeg said:

This species makes D. cabadae & lanceolata look like wimps.

I just had the first inflorescence appear on one of my Dypsis pembana.  What I found interesting is that its much taller and older than my Dypsis lanceolata & Dypsis lutescens which had there first flowers a few years earlier.  In that the inflorescence hasn't opened on the pembana yet, I don't know if it will hang on long enough to produce any flowers.  So the reason for my post is that while I've seen plenty of Dypsis lanceolata flowering here in California, I don't recall any Dypsis pembana flowering.  Is mine typical in being slower to flower. I recall seeing photos of another of the clumping Dypsis which flowered younger, specifically heteromorpha.  What is your experience with D pembana compared to other clumping Dypsis.  Of course the only one with an inflorescence for me is one of my two solitary specimens, not one of the clumping ones.

[PalmatierMeg]

My older pembana (planted from a 3g in 2009) has flowered for the past several years but all the seeds abort - I don't know why. Same with my remaining lanceolata. My cabadaes have never flowered. It's a mystery. Keep me posted on how your palm does.

[Tracy]

9 minutes ago, PalmatierMeg said:

My older pembana (planted from a 3g in 2009) has flowered for the past several years but all the seeds abort - I don't know why. Same with my remaining lanceolata. My cabadaes have never flowered. It's a mystery. Keep me posted on how your palm does.

Yours is probably the same age as mine, in that I planted mine from a 7 gallon in either late 2010 or early 2011.  This one did have a couple of companion trunks at one time that were damaged during my 2013/14 remodel and aborted.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that yours flowered earlier in Cape Coral than here, but was it faster than your lanceolata (s)?  Would love to see how big your pembana from 2009 is now just to see how the difference in climate has effected its growth rate.

[PalmatierMeg]

2 hours ago, Tracy said:

Yours is probably the same age as mine, in that I planted mine from a 7 gallon in either late 2010 or early 2011.  This one did have a couple of companion trunks at one time that were damaged during my 2013/14 remodel and aborted.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that yours flowered earlier in Cape Coral than here, but was it faster than your lanceolata (s)?  Would love to see how big your pembana from 2009 is now just to see how the difference in climate has effected its growth rate.

Both of my pembanas are much larger than the lanceolata. My oldest is a bit hard to photograph so I will take photos of the second one, which is nearly as large. It has finally recovered from frond damage due to Hurricane Irma last September. Right now we are getting a huge thunderstorm.

[Patrick Palms]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ziKuwozHLgE

The Pemana has wonderful arching leafs. And grows fast 

[Patrick Palms]

Heres my 16 month old Pembanas.. Not sure how many years it will take to start growing Trunk ?

[Patrick Palms]

Pic taken when 1 year old

[Brett in Mission Viejo]

Interesting. My Pembina is 14 years old and has never flowered yet, but it is about 25 feet tall! It is partially shaded. Got a doinker on my Lanceolate this year. My Cabadae is very slow under canopy (about 4 feet tall), but is consistently growing for 17 years!

Pembina Trunkal area

Pembana looking up

17 year old 4 foot Cabadae

Lanceolata doinker

The Lanceolata was purchased as Lanceonata, at JM years ago. Supposedly a different form?

[Tracy]

3 hours ago, Brett in Mission Viejo said:

The Lanceolata was purchased as Lanceonata, at JM years ago. Supposedly a different form?

Not to digress from the D pembana too much, but I have two forms of lanceolata with one being much slower than the other.  I planted the smaller lanceolata about the same time and similar size as the D pembana with the inflorescence.  That lanceolata has much narrower girth on the trunks than the "normal" lanceolata or pembana, slower growing, more sensitive to burning with too much sun and a pinkish hue to it's new flushes even now after about 7 plus years in the ground.

[PalmatierMeg]

10 hours ago, Tracy said:

Not to digress from the D pembana too much, but I have two forms of lanceolata with one being much slower than the other.  I planted the smaller lanceolata about the same time and similar size as the D pembana with the inflorescence.  That lanceolata has much narrower girth on the trunks than the "normal" lanceolata or pembana, slower growing, more sensitive to burning with too much sun and a pinkish hue to it's new flushes even now after about 7 plus years in the ground.

My remaining lanceolata is perhaps 6' tall but leans because of Hurricane Irma. It has flowered the past several years but seeds either don't set or abort very young. I don't know why that happens to it and my pembanas. Do they lack a pollinator not available in SWFL?

[PalmatierMeg]

Tracy, as you requested here are latest photos of my second D. Pembana. It is in the final stages of recovery from Hurricane. One stem has flowered but not produced viable seeds. 

Dypsis pembana, Cape Coral, FL

[Really full garden]

I have a forest of D.pembana growing on the hill behind my house. Mine still show some signs of ash from our recent eruption. These are now 11-12 years from seed and are just starting to produce seeds. These are one of my favorite carefree palms.

 

[Patrick Palms]

Meg your Pembaba looks amazing..how old are they?  Scott, have your Pemban palms reached full growth hieght ?

[Really full garden]

10 hours ago, Patrick Palms said:

Meg your Pembaba looks amazing..how old are they?  Scott, have your Pemban palms reached full growth hieght ?

My tallest trunks are 6 meters tall and continue to grow taller. I am not sure how tall they eventually grow.

[Tracy]

On 7/18/2018, 3:42:12, PalmatierMeg said:

here are latest photos of my second D. Pembana. It is in the final stages of recovery from Hurricane. One stem has flowered but not produced viable seeds. 

Very attractive specimens Meg, especially considering they are in the final stages of recovery!  I'm not very optimistic about getting viable seed from this first inflorescence on mine.  The inflorescence seems compact, but I'm comparing it to my other clumping Dypsis species which are flowering.  Added to that, I've never had any other palms set viable seed on their first go around.  Then again, I don't try very hard.

[PalmatierMeg]

Beautiful palms, Tracy. Both of my Dypsis pembana have flowered for several years but seeds always abort. I don't know why. Same for D. lanceolata. My D. cabadae has never flowered.

[steve99]

 Dypsis Pembana is one of my favorites!   I have six of them planted throughout my garden.  Here's a pic of my best one which was only one metre in height when planted in April 2015.  

 

[Patrick Palms]

Grear palm. Put my little one to shame