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Looking good Joe!

Kerriodoxa elegans will be ripening soon, usually by mid Sept. Due to their size/weight and high cost of shipping them to me, we are only taking Pre-orders again this year. Cost is $1.50 each. Send requests to:Beachpalms@cfl.rr.com

I agree Loquats are really pretty. They are a good compliment to palms and other tropical/subtropical plants in the garden. They also proliferate very easily and if you plant one you’ll find out you end up with several once they have started to bear fruit! They seem to handle all the weather Central Texas can throw at them: cold down to 10F, heat to 115F, months with no rain (although they will look exhausted), or deluges and saturated soils! My local birds love them as they create quite a dense thicket offering shade and protection from predators.

Thank you so so much Harry for your precious advice !!

I say DoomsDave them. They're intolerably boring. Agree wholeheartedly with all of the above.

It is a great tree, I purchased it from a specialty grower, at a reasonable price, not sure where they acquired the seeds. There is one in the Royal botanical gardens in Sydney that is a very big tree. One day i will plant it in the ground in a very well amended spot with the utmost of care!

One tough tree the loquat, cold, hot, wet, dry you pretty well much can name it for this tough beauty. Reasonably fast growing, a great pioneer tree that has a nice tropical look about it. With the added bonus of fruit that’s good to eat, and quite ornamental with the yellow fruit. Be warned though the birds love them, so if you want the birds in the garden like I do, they can have the fruit being a bird attracting tree, iam quite happy with the birds!

I'm inclined to think Eric is right The rainy season may have ended even earlier than last year.

Never really looked at a foxtail as a royal palm, but yes the trunk is somewhat a little similar. I guess a smaller version of a total in a way. And the best looking queen palm I ever saw was in habitat in South America, the perfect spot for them, but not in my garden dare I say!

some people talk about the queen palms the same way you describe the ubiquitous foxtail in Australia.....what makes foxtails so popular (at lease in florida)is they are bulletproof. foxtails resemble royal palms but do not get as large, which is a big factor for most homeowners with limited space.

Tis a brave person who tackles a Calamus to give up her seeds! That said, I do find the NSW ones are a tad less... bloodthirsty... than their Queenslander friends

That's a solid collection. Will be good to see how the sabal Palms progress in a similar climate to my own.

OMG I am burning with jealousy! I have been looking for this plant since always! How did you manage to find a seed or plant if I may ask? I was told it is illegal to export from Brazil. Once I managed to get a single seed but it did not sprout. It was super expensive, the most expensive seed I ever bought; it was from a US nursery.

You can call it that I suppose, but when they grab you it’s not love on their mind!

Every time I go bush I always look for seeds in there habitat, and over 35 years of going bush, I have never found any seeds!

Why are foxtails so popular overseas, I see a lot of growers who bend over backwards to have one in there garden. In Australia they are a landscapers favourite, chain stores sell them like they are going out of fashion. Yet to a palm collecting palm nut in Australia they hardly get a second look. I have them in my garden but they don’t wow me like other palms do. Yes they are bullet proof, take a beating in sunlight, tolerance of a lot of dry conditions and they grow in some of the rockiest soil around. Cold frosty weather seems to be there only enemy. They are becoming a bit of weed in the Northern Territory around the Darwin area, with city councils asking people not to plant them as they grow so well in the heat up north. So what’s the beauty and challenge a lot of overseas growers find in them!

Love bites...

One of my favorite Calamus, if not the most beloved. Calamus is functionally dioecious.

Ravenea glauca in flower caught my eye today.

You don’t necessarily need shade to grow them, full blazing sun is not there preference for growing conditions. But you will be surprised how much sunlight they will take. Growing in the container will hold them back, for as long as you like. The row of hookeri are in very bright sunlight in summer near the greenhouse, if you can provide a cool root run they take a lot of sunshine.

Mid summer is the time for Becarriophoenix to rock!

Beautiful flamethrower palm! My flamethrower palm was given to me by a friend in 2003. It was most likely two years old. I purposefully kept it in a very small pot for these many years to keep it small. I repotted it into a larger pot a little over a year ago and it’s now growing bigger and faster. Unfortunately, I don’t have a shady spot for it to be planted into the ground.😞 It probably would be 15 ft or taller by now if it had been planted into the ground.

These are the palms growing in my front yard. They are all fairly recently planted between 1 and 3 years in the ground. My Chamaerops humilis that has an oddly strong costapalmate shape to all the new leaves that have grown this year. it’s only the newest leaves on the main trunk doing this. The oldest leaves are flat. Butia odorata that I got from Home Depot for $70. I wish it was blue but for that price I’m not going to be picky. I did a deep dive on an older post talking about the shift from most of the mass produced ones being blue to now the green ones being most common. I also wonder if the ones with strong blue coloration may be more hardy.. Sabal rosei that @Chester B inspired me to try that was planted this summer. It’s a decent size and was a really reasonable price from project palm Rhapidophyllum hystrix planted this spring. It’s in part sun because I had heard they appreciate some shade.. but I’m not sure that shade would be necessary in PNW climate. It does get at least 6+ hours of strong sun though. It has 4 pups and I’m trying to decide if I should just select a few to have a more structured look or just let it grow fully wild bush style. Trachycarpus princeps x wagnerianus Still very small but starting to really speed up this summer. It has some nice blue coloration and the underside of the leaves are super white but it doesn’t show up well in the pic Trachycarpus fortunei is just a required staple in the PNW. It’s a random seedling but it’s got really nice blue coloration on the underside of the leaves and the leaves are surprisingly rigid on it. It grows so fast, pushes 3 spears at a time all growing season. Sabal minor - this year it just started picking up speed.. it’s starting to open its 3rd leaf of the year and there’s a nice size spear behind it already. The old leaves are pretty yellow I think from not fully realizing how quickly the planting spot got dry last summer. All of these are planted on a large south facing mound. It has been helpful having everything on a slope since the native soil is pure clay.

Hey Ben, I was at the SABG on July 14th and this is how the Livistona chinensis looks. Still showing damage from the freezing rain (and the cold) we had back in February. I was at the River Walk this past weekend and those still looked pretty good! I noticed that thee were three Queens remaining as well. Sadly two of them are zombie palms as the growing points were killed despite still having some green fronds. One Queen right next to the buildings survived. I am really happy with how my Robusta’s are looking this summer! They have really grown well and have such deep glossy green fronds. I’m going to enjoy them while they are still small. At some point, years from now, hopefully they’ll be as large as these two near the Pearl: