The Surprise Flowering

[Kim]

During my July visit to the Big Island, Bo had shown me a huge inflorescence that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere on one of his D. prestoniana. At the time it was humming with bees. More recently this September, we stepped out to look at the seeds and realized a second inflorescence on the same palm had appeared, again, seemingly out of nowhere.  By then, the first one was forming seeds.

The next day, walking the path to my place, I hear a busy humming nearby... bees!  Another D. prestoniana had flung forth an inflorescence here as well.

Can you see it?

From a different angle...

...the flowers were falling steadily to the ground, disturbed by the frantic bee activity...

...creating a puddle of tiny white blossoms on the ground below.

 

[Kim]

Meanwhile, my own D. prestoniana, which is older and quite a bit taller, shows no sign of reproductive activity.

[Tracy]

10 hours ago, Kim said:

Meanwhile, my own D. prestoniana, which is older and quite a bit taller, shows no sign of reproductive activity.

Nice photos Kim.  Very strange that yours hasn't flowered yet, and the younger smaller ones were flowering.   My smaller of the two I have is flowering, but it doesn't appear to be the "Big Curly" type of D prestoniana.  It is just at the point of forming trunk, but doesn't have any rings above the soil yet, and the inflorescence is much smaller than on the Big Curly types you show.  My entire inflorescence is smaller than a single branch on Bo's inflorescence.  The bees sure love it though!

The inflorescence now, and the palm at the stage that I first noticed the flower spathe emerging.

[realarch]

Finally flowers! I remember Bo showing me the inflorescence back in July as well. Spectacular.

Tim

[BS Man about Palms]

My big curley threw out 3 in quick succession. When I saw how enormous the inflorescence was, I decided to trim off the first and third as I had heard first flowers are often not viable... AND they require a vast amount of water and food to power... As it is, none of the seeds seemed to germinate... from 30,000 or so..  Mine were orange.. Suchin said most versions are red.

Good Luck!