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Beautiful colours

Oh I don’t know much about timing. In that case my approach would be to have some pollen on hand and dust the female flowers at different times after bloom, like a few days after, a week after, and like 2 weeks after for good measure. A sort of calculated persistence. But it happens in the wild/open air without much thought so it can’t be that hard.

Using a golf club would be quite an expensive tantrum 😬

You dug it out ???!? Hope it survives for you I’ve heard they respond very poorly to root disturbances. I would say it could very well be variegation. they grow in very poor soil conditions so deficiency in them is not that common. keep us updated though, i hope it lives

Nice finds The tree fern looks beautiful too. I saw some for sale on the reduced rack at lowe’s a few weeks ago but they’re a bit more tropical for their own good where i live. I think the cycad you saw is a Cycas circinalis, others may have something else to say though. All in all it’s nice to see diversity in the landscape though it’s typically seen in areas where there’s a smaller chance of such plants dying in winter.

If you like Cycas try and find a Edentata / Litoralis. They appear immune to scale. All my other ~50 Cycas are scale magnets, but never a hint on Edentata / Litoralis. They are cold hardy to about freezing and look like the "Queen" sago Thouarsii. Encephalartos from Central Africa grow great for me here near Orlando: Whitelockii, Laurentianus, Hildebrandtii, Manikensis, Sclavoi, Gratus, Ferox, Natalensis, and a few more. They do great with our humidity and rain. I've lost a lot of the South African blues to rot, like Arenarius, Horridus, Lehmannii, Princeps, and many more. These are more desert adapted and tend to rot on me after the winter. I'm not sure if the ones I grow will like your alkaline soil or not.

The solitary one I have in Leucadia is getting more light now that I removed a Guava tree to its west and a little north. The top of the wall is 6 feet high for perspective.

Old post but might as well chime in. Tracy, the spineless bromeliad with the brutal terminal spine in your pic is definitely Dyckia ‘Naked Lady’. The other bromeliad looks like a Dyckia brevifolia as otherwise indicated. Here’s a couple Hechtia recently installed at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek.

Pour the peroxide (3%) directly onto the spear. If the spear resists s light tug, the peroxide is just insurance.

Grow chamaedorea elegans, super easy indoors and a good selling palm for indoor plant people.

These are 5 gallons but size could easily be 15 gallon all over 48+ from soil buy 1 now for 45.00 or 2 for 80

To me it just looks like cosmetic cold damage, nothing really bad . Now if you're experiencing spear pull/pulls then that could be a problem.

Slightly toasty 93F at 4:48PM under ..essentially.. clear skies.. Essentially = a cloud or two and maybe some smoke from a new fire up north ( Wind direction currently appears to be directing smoke south toward this side of the valley ) Further south? compact, cutoff, upper level low spins across parts of N. Sonora and the borderlands across S. AZ. Someone, somewhere down there might see a sprinkle, ..maybe catch some flashes flashing just above the southern horizon before this system heads toward the plains tomorrow.. Other than that? One " nice " evening < for those who love their morning lows in the 60s > ..before it's ...essentially ..nuthin' but 100s and 70s from tomorrow, until..... Throw in some clouds ..per the current forecast suggestions.. at times and.. What you see, is what you get ..for now. Pretty standard stuff for May here really.. NMME May update is out and ..While a slam dunk is never a guarantee, the closer we get to the start of Monsoon season ..Currently just a little over a month away.. the more all the WX model suggestions pointing toward a wet summer / start to fall ahead become tougher to ignore. Lead 1: Today's thoughts from the CFSv2 for June: ...We'll see how this looks next week.. Lead 2: July Lead 3: Aug. Lead 4: Sept. Lead 5: Oct. Pretty solid wet lean in a majority of the individual NMME / IMME models, all the way thru October across this side of the world right now.. ...We'll see how thoughts from both the Copernicus long range models, and CPC monthly update look like soon.. Regardless, Mexico continues to look good ..If the current forecasts are correct, activity should pick up a bit after a recent lull across the southern and eastern half of the country as the subtropical / 4 corners High starts setting up down there over the next 3 weeks.. We'll see. Also, just a week left to go before the start of Hurricane season ..on the best coast.. No solid hints of an early riser on the models atm but, we'll see what happens.. Closer we get to June, and SSTs between southern Mex. and N. Baja already off to a warmer than normal start, it is inevitable something gets stirred up down there, soon. This year's names.. Could we use ..all of them... this year??? Next year? ..maybe we'll find Waldo, LOL..

I was doing some research on S. domingensis and through some detective work and with the help of Google AI was able to find the location (in Bokeelia, Florida) of this house with the big old specimen out front. Sad to say this is yet another one of these situations where something great is felled...the above picture from 2021 is the last image with the palm in place. By September of 2023 it was gone. So sad when you think about how old this palm may have been. I'm hoping it wasn't a victim of an ignorant homeowner and rather of the hurricanes during that period, which included a 6-to-9-foot storm surge during Hurricane Ian in September 2022. This palm does come from a heavy-duty hurricane zone, so you might think it would stand tough against it, but it is S. causiarum, rather than S. domingensis, that occupies the hard-hit coastal zone...S. domingensis is typically found in the interior where it may not have evolved such a tough disposition...You can see the image progression on Google StreetView by looking at the past dates (click "see more dates") here.

Yes, we had freezing temperatures until the middle of April this year . Record cold winter.

Both of my Operculicarya decaryi remain in pots. This one is the shorter of the two and recently stopped flowering to devote its energy to producing an abundance of new green leaves. I love the tiny glossy green leaves it holds.

Were you applying heat this time of year? 😬

For about 2 weeks we’ve been stuck under cloud from an onshore breeze as a high has slowly and lazily moved east from the southern ocean. Rain, drissle fog etc etc with a bit of sun poking through on occasion. Nights have been low double digits and high singles (warmer than Perth which had low to mid singles) but the days have barely made 20C. I’ve noticed how damp it is when trying to find dry bits of firewood. The wood is soaking up the moisture like a sponge. Tree ferns and cool growing palms are loving the cool damp conditions at the moment. However the high is clearing the clouds so sunny days approaching and slightly cooler nights with 25 and 26 forecast for Monday Tuesday and a 23 on Sunday. Then back to rain again from Wednesday. We are on the on ramp to winter though.

Hi Sean Thanks so would this be straight or is it mixed with water and do I spray on the fronds or water the base with it

I don't see anything too unusual. You could treat the bud twice a week for a month with H2O2 if you're worried.

Sadly my Adansonia digitata was not getting enough heat or too short a season of heat compared to what it required. It would get new leaves in mid-summer and had a short growing season. I finally gave up and dug it out. I put it in a pot to give to a friend who lives in Vista, where hopefully it is getting the heat that it needs. It has been a little over a year now since I gave up. I love these trees. Had it grown the way they want to, I would have had to remove it eventually as well, as it would have outgrown my garden. That would have been a problem I would have enjoyed having.

This palm should be a top choice in SoCal. Fast and jaw-dropping.

Today the favorite is this Encephalartos which is currently flushing. I include some photos of it earlier in the flush.

A wonderful, if slow, palm for us in SoCal. One of my favorites!