CFPACS Festival of Palms

[Bob Johnson]

Florida Institute of Technology Botanical Garden

The Central Florida Palm & Cycad Society is proud to announce the Festival of Palms at the Florida Institute of Technology Botanical Garden in Melbourne on Saturday, November 15th.

Free palm seedlings and palm seeds will be available to attendees. A Palm and Cycad Sale will run during the entire event. A wide variety of palms and cycads will be available for sale - rare and common, large and small, tropical and cold tolerant, moisture loving, drought tolerant, salt tolerant, indoor and outdoor palms.

Throughout the day there will be talks on various aspects of palm gardening and guided tours of the FIT Botanical Garden. The FIT Botanical Garden was started by FIT founding president Jerome Keuper with the assistance of Dent Smith, founding president of The Palm Society (which is now IPS).

The Festival of Palms will run from 10 am to 2 pm. Please park and enter through the South Babcock Street parking lot. Food and drinks will be available throughout the event at the Evans Dining Hall, just north of the Botanical Garden.

Schedule:

10 am - 2 pm - Palm & Cycad Sale

10:30 am - Talk #1 - Making Your Landscape Palms Look their Best  - Christian Faulkner (cfkingfish)

11:15 am - Talk #2 - Suggested Palms for the Florida’s Space Coast - Dr. John Kennedy

11:45 am - FIT Botanical Garden Tour

1 pm - Talk #3 - Palm Seed Germination Techniques - Christian Faulkner

1:30 pm - FIT Botanical Garden Tour

If you have not yet signed up as a vendor, there is still space available. Please contact me for details.

This promises to be a great event. Hope to see you there!

[Mike Evans]

Bob, sounds like a good event at FIT. If you are already a vendor w/ CFPACS, do you still have to sign up, or just show up.

[Bob Johnson]

Bob, sounds like a good event at FIT. If you are already a vendor w/ CFPACS, do you still have to sign up, or just show up.

Mike, for the Festival of Palms we are asking for vendors to confirm their participation prior to the event. I hope that you will be able to participate, you are really growing some nice palms.

Here is the CFPACS policy for sales:

Public Sales (such as the FIT and USF sales): Vendor participation must be confirmed in advance. Plants offered for sale limited to palms and cycads unless otherwise noted.

Private Sales (such as sales following garden tours at someone's home): Vendors may confirm participation in advance or show up as a "walk on." Any plant may be offered for sale.

All sales: Vendors must be a CFPACS member. All plants offered for sale must be healthy and disease-free.

We welcome current vendors and new vendors to participate in the Festival of Palms, just send me an email or PM to confirm your participation (For new vendors we will issue you a vendor number - we will also sign you up as a CFPACS member if you are not already a member).

[Bob Johnson]

Phoenix reclinata, Hyphaene sp., Livistons decora and Bismarckia nobilis are among the palms visible looking east into the Botanical Garden. They look like they have been there a while.

F.I.T. acquired the first forty acres of its present campus in 1960. In an article on the Origins Of The Botanical Garden At F.I.T, Dr. Jerome Keuper wrote that "attempts at landscaping the campus began almost immediately. We planted a row of royal palms on the new campus all along Country Club Road. People were pouring in from the north expecting to see palms everywhere. I didn’t intend to disappoint them, they would see plenty of them at F.I.T. But then came January 1961 and most of my beautiful royals turned into skinny haystacks.

It was evident that I had a lot to learn about palms but I soon heard of a man named Dent Smith who could help me. He had founded a palm society and was growing a great many species in Daytona Beach. It seemed obvious that whatever he could grow there we should be able to grow here."

[Bob Johnson]

The following is taken from an article written by Dr. Keuper that appeared in the Dent Smith Memorial Issue of Principes (January, 1986):

"I lost no time in visiting Dent Smith. I sought his advice, and stood in admiration of the great variety of palms he was growing. I found him not only willing to travel to Melbourne at my invitation, but anxious to visit our campus and study firsthand my landscaping woes.

Dent arrived in a most unexpected manner; he appeared in an outboard motorboat in the Melbourne Harbor perched on a case of beer. But his expert eyes were clear as he surveyed the campus. Dent was most impressed with a hammock that cuts across the university’s campus, and with the ever flowing stream that winds through the thickly wooded area.

“This is the place to grow palms,” was his pronouncement.” . . . So plant palms we did. It wasn’t long before Dent arrived with a truckload of Phoenix canariensis. . . . The number of trees added to the hammock grew with Dent’s enthusiastic interest in the project. . . . Dent absolutely delighted in growing seedlings in Daytona Beach for the F.I.T. Palm Garden in Melbourne. Each year he would send down hundreds of small, cold tolerant palms for us to plant along the Dent Smith Trail."

[Bob Johnson]

When Fla Power & Light Co. needed to dig a trench through the hammock to lay a power cable to the dorms, Dr. Keuper got FPL to snake the trench and cable around the existing trees and palms. This created a winding path crossing the hammock that later became the Dent Smith Trail.

Dr. Keuper relates: "A curving concrete bridge was built over the stream and Dent Smith and I began to plant Chinese fan palms (Livistona chinensis) along the way to complement the natural stand of Sabal palmettos. A potential for developing the hammock into an accessible place of beauty while maintaining its natural setting was becoming apparent."

Here is the view as you walk along the Dent Smith Trail into the hammock.

[Bob Johnson]

Right after you cross the bridge over the stream there is a nice Ptychosperma schefferi.

[Bob Johnson]

A nice grouping of cordylines and palms - Coccothrinax miriguama and Phoenix sp.

[Bob Johnson]

In the middle of the garden there is a nice patio area where we will hold the talks.

[Bob Johnson]

At one time there were nearly 400 species of palms in the garden. Freezes and time have taken their toll, and that number has been significantly reduced. Still, the beauty of the hammock palm garden remains, as well an unusual specimen here and there. Here is a very tropical looking Astrocaryum mexicanum.

[Bob Johnson]

Syagrus pseudococos and a few Codiaeum varieties.

[Bob Johnson]

Attalea sp.

[Bob Johnson]

A group of absolutely huge (especially for central Florida) traveler's palm (Ravenea madagarensis) at the edge of the garden.

[Bob Johnson]

Old and unusual palm specimens are not limited to the garden. This impressive Hyphaene sp. welcomes visitors to FIT - right outsied of the Jerome Keuper Administration Building.

[SunnyFl]

Old and unusual palm specimens are not limited to the garden. This impressive Hyphaene sp. welcomes visitors to FIT - right outsied of the Jerome Keuper Administration Building.

Hi Bob,

Sounds like a great event - nice to see you at USF, btw (sorry about my memory lapses, ack). FIT is a wonderful garden, very enjoyable to visit and the trail is amazing. We don't get over there too often unfortunately.

Edited October 23, 2008 by SunnyFl

[Bob Johnson]

Old and unusual palm specimens are not limited to the garden. This impressive Hyphaene sp. welcomes visitors to FIT - right outsied of the Jerome Keuper Administration Building.

Hi Bob,

Sounds like a great event - nice to see you at USF, btw (sorry about my memory lapses, ack). FIT is a wonderful garden, very enjoyable to visit and the trail is amazing. We don't get over there too often unfortunately.

Hi Sunny,

Good to see you at USF as well. It was a great sale, and I always enjoy seeing members and friends as they stop by the booth. USF has a nice garden as well - the trunking Allagoptera always amazes me, it looks like an Everglades palm with Allagoptera fronds.

I know the FIT garden is a bit of a hike from St. Pete. Hope to see you at our Dec. 13th meeting in Sarasota.

[Jeff in St Pete]

Wow, I just found this thread.

Bob, thanks for posting the photos and giving the background info on this garden. Very enjoyable reading!

[Bob Johnson]

Wow, I just found this thread.

Bob, thanks for posting the photos and giving the background info on this garden. Very enjoyable reading!

You are welcome, Jeff. It really is an amazing place, especially considering Dent Smith's connection to it. People had always told me that Dent Smith was involved with the garden in its early days, but finding the article in Principes with all of the interesting anecdotes really made the story come alive for me.

it would have been fascinating to have been a "fly on the wall" - or perhaps a "fly on a palm frond" - during those early years of planting.

[Moffie Bidlingmayer]

Old and unusual palm specimens are not limited to the garden. This impressive Hyphaene sp. welcomes visitors to FIT - right outsied of the Jerome Keuper Administration Building.

I wish to make contact with Bob Johnson who expressed an interest in history, etc. re palm collection near Ft. Pierce/Vero Beach Fl. My husband and I created this garden.

You may reach me at mof04@yahoo.com

Moffie Bidlingmayer

[Bob Johnson]

Old and unusual palm specimens are not limited to the garden. This impressive Hyphaene sp. welcomes visitors to FIT - right outsied of the Jerome Keuper Administration Building.

I wish to make contact with Bob Johnson who expressed an interest in history, etc. re palm collection near Ft. Pierce/Vero Beach Fl. My husband and I created this garden.

You may reach me at mof04@yahoo.com

Moffie Bidlingmayer

Hi Moffie,

I just sent you an e-mail.

That is quite a palm collection - I enjoyed seeing the photos of all those mature specimens in such a lovely setting.

[maskona]

I hope to attend, I'll have to see how my schedule works out.

[Bob Johnson]

Here is the plant list for this Saturday. We will have over 100 varieties of palms and cycads for sale from 9 vendors. Also, free palm seedlings and seeds WHILE THEY LAST! The sale opens at 10 am. For further details, please see the Festival of Palms web page.

Hope to see you there!

PALMS

Acoelorraphe wrightii

Actinorhytis calapparia

Adonidia merrilli

Aiphanes horrida

Allagoptera arenaria

Archontophoenix myolensis

Arenga engleri

Arenga ‘unnamed sp.’

Astrocaryum mexicanum

Attalea phalerata

Beccariophoenix alfredii

Bismarckia nobilis

Burretokentia hapala

Butia capitata

Butia eriospatha

Butia yatay

Butia sp.

Butiagrus hybrid “Mule Palm’

Calyptrogyne ghiesbreghtiana

Carpoxolon macrospermum

Calyptrocalyx hollrungi

Calyptrocalyx var.'boalak'

Carpentaria acuminata

Caryota mitis

Chamaedorea brachypoda

Chamaedorea metallica

Chamaedorea microspadix

Chamaedorea seifrizii

Chamaedorea stolonifera

Chamaerops humilis

Chambeyronia macrocarpa

Copernicia alba

Copernicia baileyana

Copernicia glabrescens

Copernicia macroglossa

Cryosophila sp.

Dypsis cabadae

Dypsis decaryi

Dypsis fibrosa

Dypsis lanceolata

Dypsis leptocheilos

Dypsis lutescens

Dypsis rivularis

Euterpe oleracea

Gastrococcus crispa

Gaussia maya

Heterospathe elata

Heterospathe negrosensis

Hydriastele beguinii

Hyophorbe indica

Hyophorbe langenicaulis

Hyophorbe verschaffeltii

Hyphaene coriacea

Hyphaene sp.

Kentiopsis oliviformis

Latania lontaroides

Licuala orbicularis

Licuala ramsayi

Licuala spinosa

Livistona australis

Livistona decors (decipiens)

Livistona drudei

Livistona nitida

Livistona rotundifolia

Livistona saribus

Livistona speciosa

Phoenix canariensis

Phoenix dactylifera

Phoenix reclinata

Phoenix roebelenii

Phoenix rupicola

Phoenix sylvestris

Pinanga kuhlii

Ptychosperma elegans

Ptychosperma macarthurii

Ptychosperma waitianum

Rhapidophyllum hystrix

Rhapis excelsa

Rhapis humilis

Roystonia regia

Sabal blackburniana

Sabal causiarum

Sabal etonia

Sabal mexicana

Sabal minor

Sabal minor var. ‘Louisiana’

Sabal palmetto

Sabal rosei

Sabal yapa

Serenoa repens

Syagrus botryophora

Syagrus orinocensis

Syagrus schizophylla

Veitchia spiralis

Verschafeltii splendida

Wodyetia bifurcata

Zombia antillarum

CYCADS

Ceratozamia robusta “Santiago Tuxtla”

Ceratozamia sp.

Cycas revoluta

Dioon angustifolium

Dioon edule

Dioon holmgrenii

Dioon mejiae

Encephalartus ferox

Macrozamia communis

Macrozamia moorei

Zamia amblyphyllidia

Zamia furfuracea

Zamia portoricensis

Zamia inermis

Zamia integrifolia

Zamia pumila

[plantapalm]

Bump....

It is tomorrow, I will be making the voyage anybody else?

[SubTropicRay]

Did anyone take any photos?

[Bob Johnson]

Did anyone take any photos?

It was a great day. The sale, talks were great and the setting were ideal - and we even got it in a day before the cold weather paid us an early visit. I enjoyed talking with many CFPACS members and others who were there.

Thanks to everyone who attended, bought plants and helped with the planning.

I will post some photos, just have been swamped with other items since last Saturday.

[Bob Johnson]

Finally getting around to posting some pics . . .

A portion of the large selection of palms that vendor Richard Lundstedt had for sale, customers are barely visible above the fronds..

[Bob Johnson]

Richard Lundestedt is third from the right in the white t-shirt. Thats vendor Steve Farnsworth in the back under a huge staghorn fern, he's the one wearing a hat and holding a drink.

[Bob Johnson]

Vendors Steve and Chris Nott enjoying a few moments of rest.

[Bob Johnson]

In addition to palms, the Notts had some very well grownDioon mejiae and some smaller Dioon holmgrenii for sale.

[Bob Johnson]

The free palm seedings were a hit . . . some attendees were very serious about making just the right choice!

[Bob Johnson]

Over 150 palm seedlings were given away, including Areca vestiaria, Archontophoenix cunninghamiana, Basselina gracilis, Chambeyronia macrocarpa, Coccothrinax miriguama, Dypsis leptiocheilos, Hyophorbe langenicaulis, Livistona decora, Ptychosperma burretianum, Sabal yapa and Veitchia spiralis.

Edited December 8, 2008 by Bob Johnson

[Bob Johnson]

PT forum member Christian Faulner (cfkingfish) giving a presentation on palm seed germination.

[Bob Johnson]

The Three Palmateers . . . CFPACS secretary Chuck Grieneisen, West Coast VP Christian Faulkner and webmaster Frankie Ramos appear to be having almost too good of a time talking about . . . palms? You can't see it too well in the pic, but thats a variegated lady palm, Rhapis excelsa that Frankie is eyeing - don't know if he went home with it or not.

[Bob Johnson]

Folks were snatching up palms all day. Here you can see several palm enthusiasts in various stages of deciding exactly which palms to add to their collections.

[Bob Johnson]

It was a great day in all aspects. Many thanks to the CFPACS vendors, speakers, seedling donators and other volunteers, and to the FIT staff for all that you did to make the 1st annual CFPACS Festival of Palms a great success! See you next fall!