Poor Scrub Palmetto (Sabal minor 'Welfare')

[PAPalmGrower]

I noticed Plant Delights Nursery is offering the Poor Scrub Palmetto (Sabal minor 'Welfare').  Their description reads:

"Sabal minor 'Welfare' is from a very interesting population of sabals growing in the Kendall County, Texas ghost town of Welfare. These poor scrub palms are growing in mostly open grassland, with many trunked specimens reaching 8' in height. It's possible these are another remnant population of hybrids between Sabal minor and Sabal mexicana, but who knows. Thanks to Texas plantsman Steve Lowe for sharing seed so we could make these oddities available."

They rate it as being hardy to USDA zone 6b.  Does anyone have experience with this plant? I'm considering adding it to my collection of cold hardy palms. 

[PalmatierMeg]

They are new to me. I'll check them out. But I've bought uber dwarf Sabal minors from them: Blountstown, Chipola & Wakulla. I also bought an Emerald Island Giant variety. These discrete populations of this variable genus are quite interesting and worth growing, esp. if you live in a northern climate where palm choices are limited. Plants from PDN aren't cheap nor is shipping but they know their plants so you can be assured you will get what you ordered. I usually order from them about once a year, about $100-150 total for 3-4 plants.

Wait! I checked the site further and discovered more I've never seen before: Sabal minor High Springs & Sabal palmetto Mocksville. Cool.

[PalmTreeDude]

I like that plant delights sells different Sabal minor from different areas. 

[PAPalmGrower]

4 hours ago, PalmatierMeg said:

They are new to me. I'll check them out. But I've bought uber dwarf Sabal minors from them: Blountstown, Chipola & Wakulla. I also bought an Emerald Island Giant variety. These discrete populations of this variable genus are quite interesting and worth growing, esp. if you live in a northern climate where palm choices are limited. Plants from PDN aren't cheap nor is shipping but they know their plants so you can be assured you will get what you ordered. I usually order from them about once a year, about $100-150 total for 3-4 plants.

Wait! I checked the site further and discovered more I've never seen before: Sabal minor High Springs & Sabal palmetto Mocksville. Cool.

Thanks, Meg! What are your thoughts on how Blountstown Dwarf and Chipola Dwarf have performed? How fast has their growth been? I see those two are still in stock at PDN.

Yes, I also was excited to see Sabal minor High Springs & Sabal palmetto Mocksville! Tempting!  :)

[PAPalmGrower]

3 hours ago, PalmTreeDude said:

I like that plant delights sells different Sabal minor from different areas. 

I agree!  It is very interesting.  They also offer a good number of Trachycarpus forms.

[PalmatierMeg]

1 hour ago, PAPalmGrower said:

Thanks, Meg! What are your thoughts on how Blountstown Dwarf and Chipola Dwarf have performed? How fast has their growth been? I see those two are still in stock at PDN.

Yes, I also was excited to see Sabal minor High Springs & Sabal palmetto Mocksville! Tempting!  :)

I have a number of Blountstown Dwarf seedlings sprinkled around the yard. Most came from my original mother palm. She flowers and sets seed, fewer than 100 per crop, only sporadically. She didn't flower at all this year, probably because of the severe drought we had last fall, winter & spring. My irrigation was cut to 1x per week and that affected a number of palms, including my dwarf Red Spicata coconut. I know of at least one person in the Midwest growing this variety in a pot and getting it to seed. These uber dwarfs are well suited for pot culture in northern climates if the pot is deep enough for their saxophone roots. Normal Sabals don't take pot culture well long term.

I just got several Chipola dwarfs this past spring so they have some growing to do. I've been looking for Chipolas for several years until PDN brought them back in 2017. This one should be a bit larger than Blountstown & Wakulla but not much. I've got two surviving Wakullas out of four I've tried. They look a lot like Blountstowns but impress me as not as tough.

Finally, thanks for your topic. I decided to bite the bullet and order 1 ea. of S.m. Welfare & High Springs (another FL uber dwarf reaching 24" high x 48" tall) & an S. palmetto Mocksville (not so much for its coldhardiness but for the somewhat mutated leaves). I wanted to get another Wakulla but PDN was out of them.

I see you live in PA. Smaller Sabals should be easy to keep in pots or to protect if planted in the ground. Zone pushing Sabals in PA correlates to me growing potted uber tropicals in SWFL. Most of the winter I leave them be but carefully watch nighttime lows. When those fall below 45F I move them indoors until the next day. I do that maybe a dozen or two nights per winter.

[PAPalmGrower]

11 minutes ago, PalmatierMeg said:

I have a number of Blountstown Dwarf seedlings sprinkled around the yard. Most came from my original mother palm. She flowers and sets seed, fewer than 100 per crop, only sporadically. She didn't flower at all this year, probably because of the severe drought we had last fall, winter & spring. My irrigation was cut to 1x per week and that affected a number of palms, including my dwarf Red Spicata coconut. I know of at least one person in the Midwest growing this variety in a pot and getting it to seed. These uber dwarfs are well suited for pot culture in northern climates if the pot is deep enough for their saxophone roots. Normal Sabals don't take pot culture well long term.

I just got several Chipola dwarfs this past spring so they have some growing to do. I've been looking for Chipolas for several years until PDN brought them back in 2017. This one should be a bit larger than Blountstown & Wakulla but not much. I've got two surviving Wakullas out of four I've tried. They look a lot like Blountstowns but impress me as not as tough.

Finally, thanks for your topic. I decided to bite the bullet and order 1 ea. of S.m. Welfare & High Springs (another FL uber dwarf reaching 24" high x 48" tall) & an S. palmetto Mocksville (not so much for its coldhardiness but for the somewhat mutated leaves). I wanted to get another Wakulla but PDN was out of them.

I see you live in PA. Smaller Sabals should be easy to keep in pots or to protect if planted in the ground. Zone pushing Sabals in PA correlates to me growing potted uber tropicals in SWFL. Most of the winter I leave them be but carefully watch nighttime lows. When those fall below 45F I move them indoors until the next day. I do that maybe a dozen or two nights per winter.

That's excellent, Meg!  Please share some pics of your new purchases when they arrive!

Thanks for all the info.

Believe it or not... I have two of the regular Sabal minors that came through last winter completely unprotected here in zone 6b, central Pennsylvania. We had stretches up to 120 hours below freezing and some single digit temperatures and it did not harm them... they were only planted July last year!  Here's a recent pic (below). I will watch these and protect them if extreme cold is predicted next winter.

All my other palms, Nannorrhops ritchieana (2), Nannorrhops ritchieana var. 'Silver', Nannorrhops ritchieana var. 'Kashmir' (5), Serenoa repens, Serenoa repens var. 'Georgia Silver', Trachycarpus takil. Trachycarpus princeps, Trachycarpus fortunei, Trachycarpus fortunei x wagnerianus (3), Chamaeropis humilis, Chamaerops humilis var. 'Cerifera', Butia capitata, and Rhapidophylum histryx are in large planters that get brought inside after the nights start getting below 19 degrees F and the days stay below freezing (they are not bothered by temps above this in their pots). 

[PAPalmGrower]

On 8/25/2017, 12:48:15, PalmatierMeg said:

I have an interest in mutant and/or dwarf Sabals. Yesterday I received three new Sabals I ordered from Plant Delights in NC: Sabal minors High Springs & Welfare & Sabal palmetto Mocksville. I was asked to post photos of my new acquisitions. Right now they all look like typical Sabal seedlings but I hope they will distinguish themselves in the future.

Photo #1: Sabal palmetto Mocksville, left; Sabal minor High Springs, middle; Sabal minor Welfare, right

 

1) Sabal palmetto Mocksville from Mocksville NC. This plant is descended from a palm still living in Fayetteville, NC, that survived the brutal winter of 1984/85. My interest is not so much its extreme coldhardiness but its leaves that are less divided than typical Sabal palmettos. It also flowers at an earlier age.

 

2) Sabal minor High Springs - a dwarf variety from High Springs, FL, that reaches 2' tall and 4' wide

 

3) Sabal minor Welfare, "poor scrub palmetto" from Kendall County, TX, near the ghost town of Welfare. A distinctive Sabal minor that can form trunks up to 8' tall. According to PDN, this may be a remnant population of a hybrid between Sabal minor & S. mexicana.

 

Here are some great photos of the Sabal minor 'Welfare' plant received by @PalmatierMeg.  I'll be very interested to follow its progress!

[Palmsbro]

What is the progress of the palms pictured? It has been about 8 months since the last post on this topic.

[PalmatierMeg]

I took the following photos today. I planted them all last fall and all are starting to go palmate. They are still small but will pick up speed as temps rise and sun strengthens on the way to rainy season. Now the heat is on I try to hand water them at least once a week when there is no rain.

Sabal palmetto 'Mocksville'

Sabal minor 'Welfare'

Sabal minor 'High Springs' dwarf

Sabal minor Chipola dwarf

[Palmsbro]

8 minutes ago, PalmatierMeg said:

I took the following photos today. I planted them all last fall and all are starting to go palmate. They are still small but will pick up speed as temps rise and sun strengthens on the way to rainy season. Now the heat is on I try to hand water them at least once a week when there is no rain.

Sabal palmetto 'Mocksville'

Sabal minor 'Welfare'

Sabal minor 'High Springs' dwarf

Sabal minor Chipola dwarf

Thank you for the update!

Edited April 16, 2018 by Palmsbro
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