Corphya cold tolerance

[topwater]

Is Corypha umbraculifera growable in humid 9b areas?  I've heard opinions varying from 1) no way, they can't even take a freeze, 2) they actually can take quite a bit of cold once established.   What does PT think?  I guess I should have asked first and bought second but I found two seedlings and couldn't help myself, y'all know how that goes.  

 

 

[Walt]

I have a Corypha utan that I bought in January of 2002. I pot grew it for about three years before planting it. But like you, I was concerned about their cold hardiness. As such, I planted my under high tree canopy so as to give it better protection against frost, plus a few degrees warmer air temperature due to the tree canopy reflecting rising ground heat back down. However, there were other trees planted nearby that blocked my palm from getting nothing more than broken sun.

Today my Corypha utan isn't much bigger than it was 10 years ago. It's healthy but it just doesn't want to grow big. But on the up side, my palm goes through almost every winter without foliage damage. The only time it was slightly hurt was in December of 2010 when all of Florida had an 11-day cold snap. I had 11 nights below 40 degrees and six nights below 30 degrees and three nights below 25 degrees, my coldest night being 20.8 degrees (my all-time low). My Corypha utan only had slight foliage damage. I've never tried to protect it. My climate is zone 9b.

Your palms need to be pot grown for years, then planted. I would suggest before they develop a trunk that they be protected from any below freezing temperatures. Once a trunk has formed they should be able to take more cold. But I would protect the trunk and meristem anyway. My philosophy is that the less a palm's trunk and meristem seeds below freezing temperatures the better.

 

[topwater]

Thanks for the reply, it's encouraging.  My all time lows (since 1990), have been 25.7 and 27.0 in '10 and '11, I can't remember which was which but they were both really bad.  If mine survive to adulthood they're going to be in full sun but will have zero canopy. Do you think yours is slow due to the shade or are they just slugs?  BTW, every time I see your avatar I think of Angel Eyes from the GBandU my all time favorite western!   Thanks again

[KrisKupsch]

Corypha. I live near Byron Bay, NE NSW, Australia at -28S in which we received 2-5C min every winter with frost on the flats mostly each year. My garden has about 50m of relief and only do I plant Corypha where 1. It is high enough not to frost. 2. Low enough to allow ground water to be there and 3. Winter light interception. If you can combine those you will have a chance. All C.utan I have planted in swampier sites down the bottom have died. Those in drier sites up the top, even 1 in a clay cutting in blazing hot sun all year is alive and growing, whilst the best one (all from 500mm pots - I planted 12 originally) is beside the nursery in full sun, protected from Sth winds and receives water from sprinkler and is planted at the toe of a 5m fill embankment. As for C.umbraculifera I have 1 which has now 3 leaves but only 1 when planted 8 months ago. Went through winter with no issues. This genus is of seasonal tropical monsoon areas so needs to be considered in winter for light, thus no light = no energy to get into Spring and back to growing. Its a tricky combination but its worth blowing $1000 on even if only 2 of my 12 C.utan have survived my winters. enjoy Kris. 

[Matthew92]

This link http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep359 describes Corphya umbraculifera as being 9a cold tolerant for northern FL!!

 

[Walt]

5 hours ago, topwater said:

Thanks for the reply, it's encouraging.  My all time lows (since 1990), have been 25.7 and 27.0 in '10 and '11, I can't remember which was which but they were both really bad.  If mine survive to adulthood they're going to be in full sun but will have zero canopy. Do you think yours is slow due to the shade or are they just slugs?  BTW, every time I see your avatar I think of Angel Eyes from the GBandU my all time favorite western!   Thanks again

Your are correct, that's Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) from the GBU -- one of my favorite movies of all time, along with LVC in For A Few Dollars More. On other forums my avatar and Nom De Plume is Col. Mortimer.

No doubt my Corypha utan is slow due to too much shade (not enough photosynthesis). I will post a photo of it (then and now with date stamps) so you can see the slow/no progress. I used to have a small Corypha umbraculifera years ago. Had it for about two years in a pot, but it died. Not from freeze, but from causes unknown.

FYI: I used to post here for many years (just haven't posted lately) : http://thebad.net/

[Walt]

2 hours ago, Opal92 said:

This link http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep359 describes Corphya umbraculifera as being 9a cold tolerant for northern FL!!

 

I'm very skeptical of the U of F cold tolerance rating for C. umbraculifera. However, a mature C. umbraculifera may in fact be "bud" hardy down to 20 degrees for short duration (while the fronds would be toast). Further, if the air temperature bottomed out at 20 degrees right at sun up, the bud in a mature C. umbraculifera may in fact be many degrees warmer due to it virtually being fairly insulated. Big trunked palms can absorb heat during the day, and they won't cool down as fast as the surrounding air.

I've observed this, as I have large bismarckia palms that the lower portions of the trunks get directly exposed to the sun during the day. I've taken a multimeter (with temperature mode) wire sensor, and stuck it into a shallow fissure in the trunk (at day break, but before the palm was exposed to any direct sun), and my multimeter display rose 3-4 degrees higher than the air temperature around the trunk. That indicated to me that all the water/moister in the trunk was releasing heat it had absorbed from the previous day. Probably, deeper inside the trunk it was even warmer.

[topwater]

Thanks for the replies, PT is so cool because the info is constantly being updated, whereas textbooks are often obsolete by the time they are published. For instance,  RL Riffles EofCP (which I love) says it's suitable for 10b to 11 only.  I hope he's not correct.  

[Walt]

7 hours ago, topwater said:

Thanks for the replies, PT is so cool because the info is constantly being updated, whereas textbooks are often obsolete by the time they are published. For instance,  RL Riffles EofCP (which I love) says it's suitable for 10b to 11 only.  I hope he's not correct.  

Riffle says that about many palms and plants in his books (I have all of them). I can only assume he means that the palm/plant will start to incur various degrees of cold/frost damage in a climate anything less than the minimum he stated -- and not necessarily be killed outright.

My climate is rated 9b, but that is only because I drop below 30 degrees F for one night each winter, at most, two nights -- and that is only for an hour or two just before sun up. The rest of the winter I'm 10b, 11 or higher. So most palms and plants rated for 10b only get cosmetic foliage damage.

But a 9b rated climate that sees many, many nights below 30 degrees, coupled with wet conditions, the very palms/plants Riffle speaks of may well in fact not survive.

I knew Bob Riffle fairly well when he lived in White City, Florida. He didn't personally grow many of the palms he speaks about with respect to their survivability to cold. I know some of his information was just anecdotal that he got from folks that grow palms or from published sources he read. 

So don't take everything you read in his books as gospel. That isn't a knock on Bob, as many other palm books (and I have many of them) give the same caveats with respect to palm cold hardiness. That sure confused me when I first got into the hobby. I thought if I tried to grow a zone 10b palm/plant in my 9b climate that it would drop dead the first winter.

For the most part I found I could grow far more palms and tropical plants than I was lead to believe (by the books). It just depended on how severe each winter was in my 9b climate. It depended on if I had only one or two nights in the upper 20s, or did I have 10 nights near 25 degrees. In either scenario my climate was still 9b -- but the difference meant life of death for some palms and tropical plants.

[Walt]

Below are three photos documenting the pathetic lack of growth of my Corypha utan. This palm has never been defoliated. It only had minor frond damage during the protracted cold period we had in December of 2010. That was the one and only time. Why this palm refuses to grow is beyond me. I feed it quarterly with 8-2-12 palm special and water it frequently. 

Photo 1: Was taken on March 10. 2006. Note the leaves of a small (at the time, Carolina cherry laurel tree behind it) and the tip of a frond on the right from a small Sabal mauritiformis palm.

Photo 2: Was taken today using my cell phone camera, hence no date stamp. However, note that my C. utan actually looks smaller today than it did 10 years, 10 months ago! Can you believe this? It's blowing my mind. Note now the trunk of the Carolina cherry laurel behind the C. utan that confirms the passage of 10 years and 10 months.

Photo 3: I backed up on this shot to show the developed trunk of the Carolina cherry laurel tree, plus my Sabal mauritiformis palm. Even my Sabal mauritiformis palm hasn't set any records for growth, as I got this palm in January of 2002 as a one gallon size. It still hasn't developed a trunk.

But both palms (utan and Maurti.) receive lots of shade and only broken sun. Still, I feel my C. utan should be much bigger than it is.  I would never chance trying to dig it up and relocating it to full sun for fear I may kill it from transplant shock.

Over the years my Carolina cherry laurel (a fast growing species) has provided good overhead canopy protection to both palms, mitigating any frost and holding temperatures up a few degrees. Over the years I would continue to cut back overhanging branches that would grow into the palm fronds of my Sabal mauritiformis.