Dypsis (?) potted inflorescence/seed stalk

[Funkthulhu]

I've had palms in pots for about 10 years now, and I've never had one flower for me.  Now I have this pot in my office and it has put out about a half dozen of these stalks in the last few months.  Now, when I bought this it was labeled as a Dysis lutescens.  But, now that it's popping these out I can't find a picture online to match it.  

My questions are these:  
1. Is this actually a D. Lutey?
2. Are these mature seeds?  (i.e. will they germinate)

If no to #1, what do I have?

[Pal Meir]

For Q1 (if it’s Dypsis lutescens) you should post a pic of the whole plant and not only of the inflorescence.

For Q2 that are only immature (not yet fully blooming) flowers and no fruits.

[Funkthulhu]

[Pal Meir]

24 minutes ago, Funkthulhu said:

Looks like Chamaedorea elegans and the inflorescence seems to be female flower buds.

[Funkthulhu]

Well, Phooey...

[Kai]

Looks like immature Chamaedorea seeds to me. Wait a couple of months for the seeds to swell up and change color. Then you have a good chance of germinating the seeds.

[Pal Meir]

The answer to Q1 depends on the question if the palm was already blooming with yellow flowers  (—> immature fruits) or not yet (—> flower buds).

[Funkthulhu]

4 hours ago, Pal Meir said:

The answer to Q1 depends on the question if the palm was already blooming with yellow flowers  (—> immature fruits) or not yet (—> flower buds).

Yeah, they looked like that, too....

I wish I were better at identification, especially of seedlings; I'd have fewer duplicate species.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Funkthulhu

[Pal Meir]

11 minutes ago, Funkthulhu said:

Yeah, they looked like that, too....

I wish I were better at identification, especially of seedlings; I'd have fewer duplicate species.

So if they had been already blooming before like on my photo they can’t be flower buds. In this case they have to be immature fruits as @Kai suggested.

[XYZ]

I agree that it does look as if you got a multiple planting of Mexican C elegans (common practice for some commercial nurseries to fill a starter pot with seed for "full look"). C elegans has a very specific set of pollinators, but having both sexes in proximity def makes it possible that you have produced viable fruit. That having been said, I am inclined to suspect that these will prove to be pathenocarpic and will color up early, which is a not uncommon occurrence in captive female chams that do not have access to pollen.

BTW, you appear to have a fairly alarming spider mite infestation going there. I would find a way to hose that puppy's leaves down a couple times a week at the very least, given that unauthorized miticide use in an office environment would open you up to God knows what type of civil liabilities. I have found that C metallica is a much better palm for long-term indoor use and managed to produce quite a bit of viable fruit over the years by hand pollinating a 10 year-old trio I kept in my Guatemala office.

J

[Funkthulhu]

What's the tip-off for spider mites?  What makes you say I have an infestation?

[XYZ]

Distinctive, sand-blasted look to the leaves with partial bleaching in all but particularly evident in a lower leaf in one of your photos. IME, spider mites are a major issue for many palm species with delicate leaves when grown indoors - even something as bullet-proof as C. elegans. Some very small thrips can also cause somewhat similar damage, but I suspect that if you examine the undersides of the leaves surface with even a low power hand lens you will see active mites roaming about. If you can detect any fine webbing with the naked eye, take as particularly bad sign.

Be aware that warm, stagnant conditions coupled with low RH (or warm, dusty, windy conditions outdoors) favor rapid outbreaks of these pests. Unchecked and under optimal conditions, they can impair the aesthetics of the canopy on particularly vulnerable palm spp in less than a week.

As an aside, I have found several of the dwarf Calyptrocalyx spp to be better candidates for indoor cultivation than some more commonly grown palms when it comes to susceptibility to spider mites. Many also offer the upside of showy color/mottling on their leaves and relatively compact size. Downside is they can be rather trickier to grow. A number (all?) of the cultivated Rhapis spp are excellent indoors and quite mite resistant. Iguanura spp also surprisingly good but will need to be donated or sold when they outgrow their space.

As much as I like chams, many are a PITA to grow indoors past adolescence.

J

[Funkthulhu]

Are they visible to the naked eye?  

The plants have always looked like this, but I'm going to be getting some Neem oil to treat in office and see if that helps.

[XYZ]

Depends on the genus and your eyesight. Very fine webbing on the undersides of leaves, if infestation is well-established, will certainly be visible to the naked eye. Neem oil can be somewhat helpful for suppression of populations of sucking arthropods but is not a reliable control. Personally, and after a decade of experimentation on many plant families, I find it next to useless but some growers with less at risk swear by it. It does have a distinctive odor that some find offensive. If it was really as good as its proponents claimed, we wouldn't need any other pesticides ;^)

I am not familiar with anything approved for indoor use in the US that will take out a heavy infestation of spider mites (other than a somewhat costly predatory mite release), but others here may disagree.

Yes, an established mite population will not fade spontaneously so plants will always look mildly stressed at the very least.

Good luck,

J