All Activity

The march of the weevil has entered San Clemente, and the devastation is imminent

Metroxylon amicarum gaining size while the feral hogs mine the adjacent landscape.

A young Bambusa vulgaris ‘Vittata’ starting to slowly upsize, it should exceed twice this diameter in a couple years.

The big lacey one is a scale magnet…

Agreed. I was trying to find one after the meeting you had and I got to see yours in person @Tracy . Asked at least 10 growers and all the usual suspects SoCal has to offer…..nobody had the species. Gave up on the quest but It’s a real cool plant. Unique leaflets -dale

T

Me and Giuseppe had also come across this occurrence. Imho all is about lack or not adequate quantity of compatible pollen. Pollen fertilizes but also creates various hormonic reactions inside the fruit. Perhaps in rhe end you come up with a perfectly shape and sized fruit and seeds devoid of an embryo.

I have 7, 30' tall (12' of gray wood) mature coconut palms I installed 2 years ago and I just noticed sap dripping from most of them. We had someone install white christmas lights up the trunks and the guy used regular contractor nails to secure them without my knowledge! I would never ever put a nail in a tree!! Im so sick to my stomach right now. Any help is appreciated before I do any further damage. Do I: A- leave it be and let the tree heal? B- slowly pull all the nails and spray with pesticide or fungicide? C- wait for the winter where its ver dry here to pull them all and avoid risks of pests and fungus when its not moist? I wasn't home when it was done. I had to take a minute to calm down to type this request, I was shaking when I realized what happened!

Thanks, good advice!

It is already showing some nice color. Beautiful little palm . Harry

I had a Rhapis Excelsia produce an abundant amount of seed once . None of the seeds germinated but it was cool. I have had the plant over 30 years and it only happened once! Harry This palm had quite a few seeds by the time it was done. I planted the seeds in various parts of my garden and a few in pots . Nothing popped up.

Green Thumb -Ventura . I think there are a few in SoCal. Harry

Seeing the yards of others got me into palms, and the best of those yards I have found through palmtalk.

Did you ever find this tree? I have one that is in a 5 gallon pot BUT a 1 gallon size. It is a transpalnt and took a bit of a hit but is coming back. LMK it needs a good home.

Those are issues botanists and taxonomists can not or do not raise regularly. Because those people study many sp and genera simultaneously and inspect each sp in its habitat at a certain point of time without observing its whole life cycle. Last action is possible only within growers.

Roughly around 850 species, a true bird lovers paradise!

This post is very interesting for us who live where there aren't many wild palm trees.

Yep 🙂

Mother Nature has her own way of figuring things out. It’s only when we interfere the whole balance gets out of whack. Iam sure there is a very scientific answer as to the whole process and the plant behaviour. Mother Nature never stops, she has surprises in many different ways, plants dont talk a language we can decipher, but they do talk and feel with emotions. There one step ahead of us in many ways. We may control plants in mono culture. But they are the ones who utilise and use us for their survival in our gardens all around the globe. They know what they’re doing and do it quite well.

Terrible upgrades overnight. My god. 3 days of 38C+ / 100F+ in London. 40C / 104F showing on the Met Office on Wednesday in places… ARPEGE now has 42C / 108F showing… I would be less surprised if this was for July, but it is for June, which is crazy. What’s even more crazy is the heat index could be pushing 48C / 118F. Some models even have nighttime minimums of 30C / 86F on Wed/Thurs. Ludicrous.

I know they are considered ‘functionally dioecious’, but I know of many cases of Livistona sp being monoecious and setting seed without other Livistona sp nearby (or at least very unlikely to have other nearly Livistona sp). Beyond that, I can’t say I’ve dug into it enough to know anything further like what Richard is saying.

Richard, what you have reported sounds extremely interesting! Do you mean that the existence of non own pollen on the female flowers causes a hormonal reaction, which prohibits the perfection of male flowers? That would be awesome and display in another instance, how 'wise and complicated is mother nature. I had a similar occurrence this year in my garden. An otherwise male Phoenix dactylifera has produced for the first time hermaphrodite flowers (about 0.4% of male dactylifera individuals produce hermaphrodite flowers), which caused abortion of all male flowers and other spathes containing male flowers.

They are monoecious, having both male and female flowers. So your one lonely palm will set seeds. To help with cross pollination a single tree in a stand, will tend be either male or female, choosing this characteristic to help with cross pollination. But both male and female flowers are present on the same tree. Like a lot of plants if there are no boys hanging around they have a way of setting seeds. I guess the good old hermaphrodite works in wonderful ways.

Konstantinos I have only 1 Livistona Australis, this one produces good sized seeds, when they fall to the ground, and there are many, only 1/2 germinate

How common is, that a lonely (functionally) female Livistona mariae sets fruits with fertile seeds?