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The more I look at it the more I think the branches are way too high. The tip of the trunk is now 8' tall and the trunk there is really slender. It is very windy in this spot and the fence is 6' tall so above 6' there is no wind protection. To me it already look top heavy and when these branches grow I can't imagine how it would look except to break apart, and this is not even considering storms and hurricanes. In the last few weeks I visited parks and nurseries and noticed all the Beaucarnea recurvata that branched have the branches very low. I do not see one that had high branch off points like mine. I think come spring rain season I am going to cut the top off and hope the bottom section will form new lower branches. I will pot up the cut off top section and hope it will root.

If the winters continue like that they would look ugly, at least till the end of summer here in San Antonio. The winter in Houston is often, not always, warmer by a few degrees. They will do better over there. Dactylifera defoliates too many times in SA. Not a good palm for us.

Thanks!

Heat wave conditions is what they endure, but as you say a different story in a desert heat with low humidity they would cook. Containee growing is another story in the heat, the roots just cook especially the the ones on the sides of the containers, and the direct sunlight on the container will definitely be part of that cooking process. The more humidity the more sun a palm can endure, but most definitely a cool root run makes a huge difference. But I think for most home gardeners you can pretty well much plant one in any situation if given enough water. I have a self sown one growing in basically a crack in the sandstone rocks with absolute beating sun and heat not only from the sun but also from the rocks, it’s a bit stunted looking and a tad light green colour from such enduring conditions, but surviving. It would be interesting to see how one would go further inland away from any ocean influence. But for now there tough and will tolerate a beating in the gardens in my area. Be interesting also to see how they would go in a frost area in the sun!

Last flush of summer this week before cold Southerlies arrive on Mon and Tuesday then back to average. My station briefly touched 30C today in the late afternoon. Interestingly in my records since 2017 it's never done so in March, 29.8 is the highest.

A few more palm seeds, with some interesting varieties. Thought I might get a few cycas tropophylla seeds, palms and cycads seem to go together and are just as slow as each other, plus while the palms are growing you have another sideline business.

I will post a picture ASAP!

Which product do you mean?

I hit a milestone tonight. What should I do to commemorate this? A giveaway? #nice

It was my experience when I lived in Natchez, Mississippi, that mine would suffer exactly with the local Washingtonia robustas...23F and you are skating on thin ice. The leaves would brown up nice and toasty within days or weeks of any prolonged (multi-hour) exposure at that temp. 24F and above it was usually safe. I didn't lose mine until the 2010 freeze with three days solid below freezing and a low of 18F for three mornings in a row. So I think these will be back if they stayed above about 20F. But I agree that genetics may have an effect. I believe it's still up in the air whether the blue vs. green forms have that much difference in cold-hardiness. I've heard both yay and nay on that topic...

When I came back here from TX, I was gifted a lot from this community to help me recover everything I lost. Brother @DoomsDave sent me some seed, and if you know Dave, when he sends seed he SENDS SEED. I got tons of these and they just started sprouting. I've got more than I could ever use and I don't have the room to grow them all out. I honestly don't know what a fair price is for these as seedlings. I'm very open to trades and I have no issues giving them away as they continue to sprout. I'm up to 4 and I don't think I wanna keep more than 2 or 3. I have no idea how they'll do in this climate.

I have a group of about four in a 3-gallon pot, I keep them in dappled shade but they are doing fine, no problem, and have endured up to about 50C (low 120s F) without flinching. I imagine it would be a different story if they had to endure the wrath of the direct desert sun heating up that crownshaft/meristem! I've also noticed in some palm species that the roots are far more sensitive to heat than the tops (which seems logical in terms of their evolution in the moderating effects of soil-temperature during the long process of speciation) and they can survive in the ground but tend to cark it in a pot during summer here...but I've seen no obvious stress in that regard for this species here in the low desert of the Palm Springs area. I was concerned about their survival because this species apparently thrives in the constant cool/chill of San Francisco and I've lost other Chamaedorea, apparently to heat (e.g., Chamaedorea woodsoniana). I've seen fairly tall specimens of Chamaedorea plumosa grown in full sun at a Mexican restaurant in Carlsbad, northern San Diego County, I would think about two miles from the coast, and they have pretty good appearance. There is a lot of cloud-cover there, particularly in spring, but occasional heat-waves over 100F do occur throughout coastal SoCal. But I think they could do with wind-protection there more than sun-protection in the fogbelt/immediate coastal zones. Here in the low desert I will definitely make sure to plant them in a decent amount of shade/dappled morning sun.

Page 7 looks like a bountiful garden compared to my disaster in Oviedo. Not sure on casualties yet but looking like severe. Royals, several very large Adonidias, 100’s areca’s although the lowest are green, coconuts, citrus, bananas, mangos, ti, ginger, crotons, aboricolas, colocasia, fiddle leaf, birds, you name it. Torched. Even the Bismarcks got hammered but should do fine. Only the Europeans, sabals, and livistonas appear unfazed.

I went back to review how my coconut recovered from the 2018 freeze. Took a good 1.5 years to regrow the entire crown. 2018 min was 28F. This year was 25F and change so about 2-3 degrees lower. I believe freeze duration was 4 to 5 hours longer. Pic is Feb, June and Nov of 2018.

Here is an example of my cordyline. Same plant impacted when exposed vs ok under the eave. Also optimistic the foxtail spear appears green.

Same minimum as here. Now that all of the damage is done, there will be some room to do some rework this summer. I'm moving to anything that can handle my record low, minus the stuff that is able to sneak through this event. That may be a few coconuts and a spindle palm, maybe a few others like a Carpoxylon that seems like it is still growing. There were a lot of spear-pulls down here. Even if something survives, if it is on the edge, it may get removed. If it doesn't have to be a coconut or a crownshaft palm, your location does give you some decent options as far as palms, cycads, and accent plants that will stay green during a record event. Hope tonight is the last of these events.

Truth be told, I would have been in the vicinity anyway, unfortunately my photographic skills and lack of illustrations don’t make it that interesting. Add to that the compression of the file on this forum(otherwise they’d likely never load).

Worst was 24 in my backyard. 19 2 miles away.

Here are a few things around my yard

For sure! I just mentioned above all the stuff that I love to grow around here. It's really hard to watch your ani also get old. Like really hard. And losing them feels so wrong because they should live as long as us. But! It feels good to spoil them and give them a great place to spend their lives. I bet your little jungle cat has had it pretty good.

Hahaha no worries! I like just sitting back and watching the banter 👀 Yeah I'm in sabal cou try for sure! I have the biggest and most impressive one im in love with. Mexican fans get huge here. Chinese fans. Canary island dates. Sylvester and regular dates are what you see here on the border of zone 9a/b. There are others too so I can make a pretty good jungle look here. 😁 Nothing super tropical though. But lots of people and the city plant them so its pretty sweet. The woods is full of sabal minors and big sabals along the rivers.

36.5 and slowly dropping with calm winds. Not sure if the drop will stop or not, but if it does frost is certain yet again. If it lives it's getting dug up if it's a palm and damaged. I would rather have them in the greenhouse until they are too big than keep up with them outdoors just to have the aesthetic value be minimal between freezes. Not really worth it. Oh and the Japanese maples that like the chill tried to leaf out already and may have died back due to the early heat. Lol. The damage is noticeable on everything now after that warm week, so it's clear that this year outmatches the others that have street views back to 2008. The damage from 2010 was similar but from frost, and I have seen wind burn on tolerant natives this time that I never have (like some cedars/junipers of some kind that were just planted had some minor tip burn😳). If climate change includes freezes two days after 90 degree weather each year then the consequences are more than just our gardens (like my cool season veggies that bolted), so hopefully this is a one off rarity that's another 50 years before it happens again. In any case, I have seen what it's like in my yard here in a bad winter and it's not fun gardening. Almost everything has failed or taken damage, including some natives that I hope come back, even the smilax vines were fried in spots. What a winter.

Yeah, I did see the post. The needle palm looks really good! the biggest one I have seen is planted in washington dc at the national arboretum it's massive , it was planted in the 60s. Its Massive!!!!!!! (Me for scale in the photo)

That sounds about right. Most palms outside of what you find in the big boxes are NOT fast growers and generally take about 5 years or more to produce a saleable 3/5 gallon size plant. Rare palms are often rare because they are usually too slow growing to be economically feasible to produce for a profit. Hobbyists that grow these rare palms from seed generally aren't looking to make a profit when they end up with extras to sell. aztropic Mesa, Arizona

It sucks that SA doesn't have Date Palm lines like those.