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A few listings I have for some of my palms. The price reflects what it actually cost for rare and exotic palms now. It’s not cheap growing exotic palms nowadays with customs fees, germination rates, shipping, phytosanitary certificates, soil pots, water, electricity for pumps. Plus many other hidden fees. So what’s should a rare palm be priced at when you consider what it takes, after the real mathematician has had at go at some numbers. Is it how rare the seeds are, how hard to obtain and so on. If you import the seeds it’s a whole new number again that gets added to the cost of everything. So just one plant germinates from a hundred seeds that cost ex amount of dollars to buy and import. You’re not going to make your anything on that lose. If you germinate a hundred out of a hundred then the cost of a palm can be a lot cheaper from the grower. Seed availability is another factor, hard to obtain seeds of endangered species changes the mathematical equation a lot. This puts a higher price on such palms. So it’s not the growers fault for the prices it’s the cost of the whole thing of growing rare and exotic palms. Some palms will take years in Australia before there is a local source of rare palms, and then they may not set seeds. And even then a not to open public supply, with seeds being so rare they would most certainly go to others in the palm community. That’s the cost of rare palms nowadays. The only real solution is to have a garden full of exotic palms to collect seeds.

Odd one this. My oreophilus flowered for the first time 2 years ago and turned out to be male. It produced 7 large flower spathes this year, followed by a much smaller one pretty much after the others has finished. This last spathe had pollen as I used it to pollinate a late flowering T.nanus, then a few weeks later it looked as if the male flowers were just a little slow to drop and stayed green, it wasn’t long before I realised this was the start of seed development. Three months later the seeds are still hanging on in there and haven’t aborted. So fingers crossed they will mature. I’ll add that all other male flowers in the garden had long been removed prior to the so the opening, so they should be self pollinated. I understand this is unusual but that it can happens with a couple of the species in the genus namely T.takil and T.nanus. For anyone interested the trunk is over 3 meters now and has grown rapidly in the last 4-5 years. It was planted as a small trunkless palm in 2017. Location Kent, UK.

Its a wonderful palm, I have never come across seeds of this palm anywhere, except for rps they may be able to get them, and have in the past had them.

Here’s a real beautiful little dypsis understory palm. Dypsis forcifolia lucky enough to go in as a tubestock in a wet area in the garden.

I say old chap looking a bit spiffy for Tassie, be happy to wack that one in the ground @happypalms

No dont repot if the weather is getting colder. It will be fine root bound in the container, and once you repot in the warmer months it will start growing well the. One great way to grow palms is by having them rootbound. Then you reopt them. Dont fertilise in winter either. In cold temperatures when you repot them they get a wet soggy mess of sour soil due to low temperatures and no oxygen in the soil, as soil temperatures drop the palm stops metabolising and stops growing in the cold. With no root activity you get that messy soil and especially in a what was it zone 6b, you are one great grower of palms and a gardening master in my eyes to grow anything tropical looking in that cold climate. Well done I give you two green thumbs 👍 👍 award! Here’s a picture of two in my garden, they are 30 years old!

Syagrus cearensis?

That is pretty intense , I’m so glad you are ok . This is the first report of damage from the hurricane from our Big Island people . I see a lot of contributions from folks that live there and hopefully they are ok. My friend lives on Kauai and they had a bit better go of it , mostly rain and wind like tropical storm strength. I’m not sure how Southern California will do this winter but forecasts seem to agree that we are in for a lot of rain. I was here in 1997/1998 El Niño , the first year in our new home . It was pretty gnarly with some squalls dumping 1” per hour or more. Reminded me of 1969 and other wet years living in Ventura County . I am not a scientist but I do know , in my lifetime , things have changed a bit . We just have to hold on and hope for the best. Harry

Ceratozamia totonacorum

Maybe oleracea?

I also ordered some Chuniophoenix hainanensis, as well as a few Lanonia dasyantha 'Super Mottled', Licuala fordiana, and Geonoma schottiana (I blame @Xenon for these). They will all go into raised beds. Happy to do group order with Floribunda (or RPS) in the future.

From what I've seen first hand in habitat down in Florida, the types of soils they grow in and my friend in 8b Georgia having the same results as me where they'd sail through winter Only to rot away in the summer. Drainage definitely is the problem we have with clay soils. I know of a good specimen in an unknown location in Z7b somewhere in central Tennessee that I spotted in on a unrelated YouTube channel regarding fishing next to the guy's mailbox. Me being in 8a is what tipped me off that weather was not an issue but soil. Central and East Tenn have rocky soil which has good drainage. Where I am the soil is red clay and sand together which makes a horrible compacted concrete like soil that will not drain. Saw Palmettos naturally grow in rapid draining soil. My method worked with the rapid visible growth. It's the most I've ever gotten a saw palmetto to grow.

A lot of stuff from Taiwan seems to have good cool tolerance. Kontumensis, malaiana, ahmada along with densiflora all did well for me this winter. So more zone pushing has paid off. While not in the ground yet, but if they make it as seedings they stand a pretty good chance of living. We both need to build a mega heated hothouse, but one problem it won’t ever be big enough!

Ptychosperma elegans flowering away.

We have had the first rain in 10 weeks here in recent days. Nowhere near enough at 1mm / 0.04 inches, but it is something. It still looks barren as anything however with young trees/plants outright killed... The rain will probably properly come in September, but there are parts of southern England that are on 10mm / 0.4 inches since June 1st, which is 11 weeks now... Summer 2025 (another warm, dry summer) vs this current summer of 2026... If I am not mistaken, around 45 houses have been destroyed this summer in 4 separate wildfires. At least 30 in England, 10 in wales and 5 in Scotland...

Close to another inch today. Just had a random storm pop up. Power went out and all.

Crownshaft palms seem to take storms better

Spoke with Jeff a couple days before; wasn’t worried about rain, but the potential wind had him a bit stressed. It’s an active planet, no doubt.

Does anyone know which species of Syagrus this is? Picture is from Gizella Kopsick Palm Arboretum in St. Petersburg Fl.

I had one Saw Palmetto in ground make it a few winters in a dry spot, but it eventually died. The drainage was not great though, I wonder if it would have done better if I did something like this!

I was also excited to get myself a birthday present recently. I found a couple of silver Sabal uresana from Teddy's Nursery on eBay. They arrived healthy, and they already have great color: That little leaflet on the left is a dactylifera for color comparison.

I had the chance to visit Discovery Point at SeaWorld San Antonio today, and I snapped a few pics while there. Nice use of Sabals: Chamaerops: There are a few Phoenix dactylifera in the area. This one was a pup growing up from a stump: While this one appeared to be planted as a single (not a pup) There were even some really over-trimmed needles in the area: And some Butia: My 8 year old for scale: Sagos and counties: Lastly, it has been so hot and dry for the last month that even the squirrels at SeaWorld are feeling the heat. This one was laying flat on shady concrete under a fan:

It should be one of the hardier Pinanga given its origin. Keen to try them down here in Melbourne at some point. P sylvestris and P baviensis are going ok this winter albeit in my unheated greenhouse.

To try in the ground here I got a Chuniophoenix Hainanensis, Livistona Benthamii, Kerridoxa Elegans, Chamaedorea Metallica and Pritchardia Hillebrandi. Everything else is just a bunch of tropical bucket list stuff that is bound for a life in pots like a Joey, Flamethrower, L. Mapu, some different mottled Pinanga, and a few Calyptrocalyx. What did you get? I was originally going to put a feeler out to see if anybody else local wanted to jump on the order, but I was cutting it so close to when I was going on vacation I didn't think I'd have enough time to get everybody's plants out to them.