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The leaves on these palms have almost no curve to the petiole, they dont look like Dick Douglas(RIP) BxJ. Dick was a prolific hybridizer of butia and jubaea hybrids. Beautiful trees but is the mother actually butia? Love the curved trunk!

Currently, we have 5.7 degrees Celsius / 42.26 degrees Fahrenheit in the community garden downstairs, with 97% humidity. It is foggy and everything feels cooler. This is what the next few days will look like:

This bronze flushing cycad acquired about 15 years ago or more as Ceratozamia robusta is beginning to harden off the newest flush. She has a cone maturing but I didn't try pollinating it. Leaflets are extremely long, providing a tropical appearance. The block wall behind it is a little over 6' high in that area, to provide perspective on the plant size. It can be nasty, grabbing you if you are too close as the heavily armed rachis shows.

Honestly, I'm happy for everyone here if the winter turns out to be mild, depending on the region. For us, that would mean a low of -6 degrees Celsius/21.2 degrees Fahrenheit, which is quite okay. Down in the community garden, we won't be doing much to protect anything except mulching Hedychium gardneranium, which is growing well, and Strelitzia reginae, a CIDP that was simply cut down by the stupid assistant of the caretaker, excuse my language, which we will wrap up, although I have to check again to see if it is still alive. We have to cover the balcony again with several layers of fleece, styrofoam, and fairy lights, otherwise it won't work, and we have to do it in the next 10 days. I hope everyone has a mild winter in their own zone...

Count me in for this one, if there is more room! Want to go there in the next 3 years. No jokes

Thank you for this. Very detailed and explained well. I've heard of hydroponic palms before, but I thought it was restricted to certain species. I may go with a hydroponic setup. I'll have to explore my options on that.

You can try but I doubt it. This palm is a clumper that grows large root balls sending up ever increasing stems. It would require frequent pruning (it is a spiny demon with barbed petioles and sawlike leaves) that may and probably would fatally damage it. It would require a large pot to accommodate all that subterranean growth. You might have a better chance planting it on the south side of a wall or your house, then protecting it with supplemental heat, including the ground around it. It would take forever for it to grow too tall to protect. I once worked for GE in Washington DC and became familiar with Buffalo, Binghamton, Syracuse, Burlington etc. and their terrifying winters (to me). No palm in the world could survive a winter in those places without serious protection. But I don't think Serenoa repens makes a good houseplant. For a large part of the year it requires full sun to partial shade, warm to hot (talking 90F+ daytime temps) and warm to warmish nights. You will have to provide supplement heat, light and humidity indoors, not stick them in pots and drop them nearby a window. Plus, I suspect this species, like many others similar will hate pot culture and want to be in the ground. I'm not trying to discourage you from trying them as houseplants but you will have to work hard and diligently to accomplish what you seek. My experience talking to people wanting to overwinter palms is that they refuse to study, read books and PalmTalk about palms, learn and do due diligence to discover what works and what doesn't. They grow bored and frustrated, then neglect their palm until it keels over dead. I hope you are a rare exception to that trend. Good luck.

I agree. Washies are unfazed by temps hovering at freezing. They are good to the low 20s, even the teens but I would be prepared to protect if lows fall below 20F day or night unless they rebound quickly once the sun rises.

The combination of La Niña and a Polar Vortex bodes ill for many parts of the SE and Midwest US, unless one of those weather catastrophes blinks (looking like that won't happen where I live). At the moment the predicted low will be 44F along the Isabelle Canal except for palms planted on the seawall above. A joke to many people but not here where some residents walk around in 55F temps dressed in parkas, scarves, fuzzy hats and mittens (really). Except for Snow Birds easily identified by shorts, tank tops and flip-flops on a 40F day. Yet local newscasts have to repeatedly warn year round residents not to dress their children for school in shorts, tank tops and flip-flops on 40F days before shoving them out the door. Gotta love this unhinged place. What I can predict is that temps in the low-mid 40s will cold damage fronds on my coconuts, Adonidias, Pritchardia pacificas and even bottle palms and may cause my plumerias to drop their leaves. Such damage never heals and you have to wait until spring for new growth to replace damaged foliage. And this is only 11/9. The nadir of our winters is usually forecast to be 01/10 of the next year. After that, lows begin to creep up barring another Siberian Express. If I'm looking at low-mid 40sF next Wednesday, what will I see in early January?

It would be helpful if you fleshed out your description beyond "upward shooting fronds and a similar look". Since all palms will have the emerging spear shooting upwards, and as new leaves emerge the older ones become less erect it isn't clear what you are saying distinguishes Madagascar palms (Ravenea, Chrysalidocarpus, Dypsis, Lemurophoenix or Masoala, to name some of the genera from the island), from palms of South America, Australia, Asia or the Pacific Islands. So the suggestion is to elaborate on your thoughts perhaps including photos of what you think distinguishes them. I will agree that there are several Chrysalidocarpus which are tristichous (leaves in three ranks), like Chrysalidocarpus decaryi (formerly Dypsis decaryi aka "Triangle Palm"). Perhaps that is one of the characteristics you were noticing?

But the soil around this particular individual does not look to my eyes acidic. It is on the contrary full of rocks and whitish giving the impression of strong alkalinity. Perhaps the owner, @Palmettos, is able to give more detailed information on the type of local soil. Even information about performance of acidic loving plants, such as Rhododendra, Camellia and Azalea can be instructive.

It looks better, since those new roots look to be covered, although the base still looks a bit too high to my eyes...any palm should have the base of its stem at or just slightly below the surface, particularly in a dry atmosphere, so that it can grow new roots. This can be soil, sphagnum or any other material that will provide a moist, humid atmosphere around the roots. If this were my palm, I would reset it, or, if the depth of the root-mass won't allow that, choose a taller pot. Also, if this is intended as a long-term indoor/potted palm (I'm presuming this because you're in North Carolina), you might consider minimizing or removing any fine, organic content (commercial "potting soil") in your mix, and instead incorporate a high percentage of inorganic/mineral media like lava rock/pumice, coarse perlite, coarse builder's sand, etc. with organics limited to large chunky material like coco-coir chunks (not fines) as moisture reservoirs and some orchid-bark similar to what you already have (a grieat starting-point is to look on youtube to see how aroid growers create their "chunky" mixes), because potted plants will generally rot in mucky, compost-rich soils. While the top portion of the soil-mass will be dry when you check it with your fingers, telling you to water the plant, water will have been pooling in the bottom third of the pot (the "perched water table"), creating a suffocating, dense muck-zone, and the oxygen-starved roots will literally drown in that over time. You might also look into hydroponics. Many plants thrive in these systems, producing amazing masses of healthy roots, a different appearance indeed from the root-mass you received from the grower.

It's going to be an interesting year since La Nina officially took over . We literally dodged a bullet last year. I would love to see a year where my Robusta won't defoliate but I agree with you, at least they're growing super fast. I expect mine to grow vertical next year.

I'm not counting my chickens because 98 percent of my plants will survive the coldest winter outbreak which can handle easily 1.5 zones down. I've learned from previous winters that zone pushing is a waste of time for me. I like to see things grow to a mature size . The current zone rating doesn't mean anything to me. The tropical plants I have are all in pots and will be spending the time inside the house when temperatures get below 40. I don't think you have to worry too much in the UK. You don't get these temperature swings like we do but correct me if I'm wrong.

They’re growing gangbusters Marcus! Looking forward to next year. Hopefully the coldest temps of the winter will be the next few nights coming up! Lol Well, we know better than that. It’ll be another few ice storms. 🧊

Okay fair enough. What are better indicators than red on the petioles? Aside from having to wait decades to see how big the trunk gets.

Bismarckia - Sabal guatemalensis - S. causiarum

Yeah. We're not forecast to get tons of precipitation or anything, just cold. And everything is either protected by canopy or the house, and it's all facing south or east and we're not getting crazy winds. When we get wild temperature swings like this it usually comes with lots of storms and we're not forecast for like hours of subfreezing either, just a blip.

Here's mine today (seed sourced from Belize). You can see cold damage from 19F on the older leaves

Not sure what has actually been recorded, but point taken there are CIDP's, Fallaensis etc that have obviously been around longer than recorded longevity.

This has been in the ground for at least 10 years and the tallest leaf sits about 7-8ft tall. Just now starting to pick up speed. I have others in pots that have grown much faster so maybe it’s just the genes of this particular plant that make it so slow.

Seventh month update: I am please to announce that this palm has made it through our rainy season with no issues. In the last 6 months it has opened a total of 4 new spears! Extremely excited for future growth if this keeps up. Next update will be at request or just yearly. Bonus: I have also germinated my first Jubaea lol

Yeah sorry, like I said I am no expert so I can't give a confirmed and precise account on longevity. That said, I'd be VERY surprised to know that a healthy fallaensis or a healthy Hyphaene can't outlive just about every human, and the same goes for many large palms (even if not all). However, surely people with more scientific and direct knowledge can give you a much more accurate estimate.

Within groups of deciduous and evergreen trees he slower growing trees seem to grow more dense ring patterns and trunks and they live longer. Palm trees are not trees so perhaps there is no analagous situation but Jubaeas are very slow and perhaps the longest living nonclonal palm tree. I have planted scores of trees before I started growing palms 27 years ago. Having moved 5 times I often wonder how many of those trees would be around in 50-100 years. Will my archies still be chugging along in 80 years? A. Alexandre has a reported lifespan of up to 100-150 years. carpentaria are very fast and seem to burn out sooner than archies. "The Carpentaria acuminata, or Carpentaria palm, has a lifespan of approximately 25 to 100 years, depending on conditions. In ideal conditions, it can live for 80-100 years, while its lifespan is sometimes cited as shorter, ranging from 25-50 years in general horticultural contexts. Its growth is relatively slow when young, but accelerates to about 30−60 cm per year once established, and it reaches sexual maturity around 7-10 years of age. "

It is interesting to me that even with male/female present , some Chamaedorea don’t openly fruit , unlike Radicalis or Microspadix that are prolific as bunnies! Harry