Roystonea regia and elata

[NBTX11]

The Roystonea is such a beautiful palm, that I wish I could grow one here.  But unfortunately north of the valley and maybe C.C., I think they are a no go.  Just educating myself on this palm - Don't worry, I would grow in a pot if I got one, I'm not that daring.  What is the difference between the Florida and Cuban Royal.  Some internet sites say they are synonomous, others slightly different.  I remember the royals from my trips to South Florids when I lived in FL, lining the streets of South FL everywhere, towering over everything with their beautiful trunks and graceful fronds.  Are they hardier than Cocos Nucifera.  One sight actually said that the Florida Royal is the hardier one, hardy to 9b, 26F.  Post pics of your Roystoneas and where you are growing them.  Are they like cocos and make it about halfway up the FL peninsula.  Can they be grown in Cal with success, or do they need heat like cocos.

[quaman58]

Hey Jim,

I doubt I'm telling you something you don't know, but I think fewer folks all the time recognize R. elata as a distinct species. I don't know when that began to change, nor do I know if it's even listed on the world species list separately. There are smarter people than myself who can expand on that a bit hopefully.

Regards,

Bret

[Jim in Los Altos]

Jim,

In California, the R. regia is concidered the hardier one.  Way up north here in the SF Bay Area I'm growing two R. regias and a small R. borinquena, all three in the ground. Despite looking a little yellow by the end of winter, they spring back as soon as things warm up a bit. We don't get a lot of heat in much of the Bay Area and Los Altos is no exception and even when the days are warm, the nightime lows are still in the lower 60's in the summer. Cocos nucifera has absolutely no chance outdoors here. They rot in the cool damp winter soils and need lots more summer heat. Parajubaea species are the best bet here for a fairly close Coconut appearance and they love the cool nights.

[Palmateer]

Here in Central Florida, the regia has been observed to reliably produce a bulged trunk, while elata trunks bulge little or not at all.

Some botanists have said that there aren't enough differences in the flowers and chromosomes to justify giving the elata a separate species status.

[Ken Johnson]

Bulges in Royals are a result of diet and conditions. The ONLY difference is the name.

Like Pseudophoenix, Royals were probably brought to Florida by early humans. The reason was probaly food. And not just for humans. Pigs love the fruit of both!

[NBTX11]

So basically they are the same palm, correct?  I also seem to remember somone posting pics of some large ones in Galveston TX.  They must be pretty fast growers, because I doubt they had been there before 1989.

[Dave-Vero]

Scott Zona of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden did his dissertation on royal palms, and did the palms for the Flora of North America.  He considers our Florida royals to belong to the same species as the Cuban ones.  Cuba does have a couple of narrowly-distributed endemics in additon to Roystonea regia. http://www.efloras.org/florata....0027116

[DoomsDave]

Dave-Vero!

Nice to meet you!

Tell us a bit more about you and your garden, if you want.

That monograph is fascinating.  In particular, that note about the Royals being found naturally in central florida.  If birds and bats do poop the seeds, it might explain their rapid ebb and flow in population.

dave

[Trópico]

Incidently I was in the Orange County Courthouse applying for my passport, and they have a display of old pictures of what used to be in that location in ages past. There is one set of pictures that caught my eye. In the first one a guest house with two Roystoneas as tall as the two story building, and in the second one, taken perhaps a decade or two later, the same guest house with two "lightpoles". Little Ice Age did them and I want them back!

[Davidl]

Here's a few in south central florida.They grow good here south of lake okeechobee.

]My Webpage[/url

[NBTX11]

I remember taking 441?? south through FL and seeing them around the towns around Lake Okeechobee on my way to S. Florida.  That was the furthest north I remember seeing them in the center of FL.  I bet they are found quite a ways up the coasts though.

[ruskinPalms]

Roystonea is one of my favorites. As soon as my 2 coconut seedlings die this winter I will put roystonea in their place! I can't believe these used to occur naturally in central florida. Has anyone ever seen royals growing naturally in central florida in recent times?

[NBTX11]

(Dave from So-Cal @ Jul. 08 2006,13:48)

QUOTE

Dave-Vero!

Nice to meet you!

Tell us a bit more about you and your garden, if you want.

That monograph is fascinating.  In particular, that note about the Royals being found naturally in central florida.  If birds and bats do poop the seeds, it might explain their rapid ebb and flow in population.

dave

The birds could have taken them from Cuba to Florida and planted them naturally.

[Stan]

I heard the difference in the native Florida royal and all others is that the native is the one species still standing after a hurricane.The only people i know in south Florida confirmed that their Royal has taken the last three hurricanes..just what i hear..no proof.

[surgeon83]

(syersj @ Jul. 08 2006,12:26)

QUOTE

So basically they are the same palm, correct?  I also seem to remember somone posting pics of some large ones in Galveston TX.  They must be pretty fast growers, because I doubt they had been there before 1989.

That would be me.  I have found 13 I think to this point, not including mine.  Moody gardens has 6 or 7, 4 of which are probably 35-40' tall.  Of course I'm sure those were planted with trunk.  The largest one I've seen in a private yard is about 30' tall, and I highly doubt it was planted with trunk.  I assumed it would have to have been planted after '96, but then again this one (used to be) under canopy and could possibly have squeaked by in '96.  

Here are some pictures taken in Jan-Feb; the royals did not seem to be in the best shape at the time, I haven't seen them to tell if they've improved.  

[surgeon83]

A few from Moody Gardens:

Sure none of them look anywhere near as good as the ones in S. Florida, but this is zone 9a after all.

[NBTX11]

Surgeon, I just find it very hard to believe that Galveston is or has ever been zone 9a.  I bet if you went off the last 20 years they are 10a, and if you did a 100 year study they would be a 9b at least.  Or did the "big" freezes where the Galveston bay had ice on it bring it down that much  

[NBTX11]

Did a quick study, Beuamonts 56 year avg min is 25, and Houston's 34 year avg min is 24.8, so Galveston's has to be in the 27-29 degree range.  They didn't list Galveston on the site I used for research (below in my sig.)

[Dave-Vero]

In the human environment, it may not be easy telling the ancestry of planted royal palms.  Richard Moyroud, and undoubtedly others, have sold plants or seed of definite wild-in-Florida origin.  The native Floridians could very well be different in some ways from the majority of Cubans--certainly the southwest corner of the state is an odd environment with its abundance of limestone and poor drainage.

Scott Zona's discussion of Bartram's description of royal palms from the St. Johns River owes a lot to Frances Harper, whose "The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalist's Edition" (Yale 1958) is an awesome and obsessive work of scholarship.  Harper figures that Bartram saw royal palms near Palatka and at Hontoon (Huntoon) Island.  Bartram also described what Harper thought was the Okeechobee gourd growing on the St. Johns above Lake Dexter.  This plant was finally rediscovered in the same area about a decade ago by Marc and Maria Minno.  The Minno's discovery lends credence to Harper's scholarship, and explains why Zona was interested in a factory that was using palm wood.  

At our latitude, old royal palms have survived freezes and other insults, so it's no surprise that one across the way from my house lost its top in one of the storms two years ago.  The sustained winds were probably no more than 90 mph based on wind swath analyses for Frances and Jeanne available through the National Weather Service's Melbourne website).  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/

Western Cuba has a terribly high incidence of hurricanes, so I'd expect their trees to be as resistent as their Florida cousins.  

[Dave-Vero]

Surgeon83, those are very nice plants, allowing for the need to trim some leaves away from the building.

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Surgeon, I agree with Dave-Vero: the only thing wrong with the Moody royals is their being too close to the pyramid and have too many missing leaves because of that proximity.

As for the first photo the dead leaves looks like they are salt spray damaged; is the palm very near the Gulf?

[Guest]

Dave-Vero,  Please look up my e-mail when you can and send me info on where you live (if you care to). It sounds like we live in the same neighborhood, and as of yet have not met. I thought I knew all of the palm people in my immediate area. There are three houses on my street with about one hundred  or so species of palms in containers and in the ground. I have been collecting for almost fifteen years now. So please give me a holler, so perhaps we can keep tabs on local growing interests.

Has the Roystonia regia\elata mystery been solved yet? Its always been my theory that the Florida Royal (elata) was an advancing or migrating landrace of Regia. Iwould love to know the final answer on this one.

The comment about the birds and bats transmitting Roystonia proginy, begs the question as to whether we should prehaps factor in the air-speed velocity of an unlaidened bat or bird. After all it seems to have made some difference with regard to swallows and coconuts. Hmm? Forgive my Pythonocentric attempt at humor.

[bubba]

A rather remarkable article in the most recent Volume of Palms by member Ed Brown regarding Dent Smith's garden in Daytona and a forty foot Royal in that location, which is likely the farthest northern specimen in Florida. Also notes that 1700's explorer, Bartram, descibed Royals as far north as the St. John's river near Astor. Is Florida growing colder?

[ruskinPalms]

9Bpalmnerd,

Are asking whether or not a bird could eat a roystonea fruit in Cuba then make to the florida mainland before it had to do number 2?  ???

I am not sure, but I think that people have drained sooo many wetlands here in florida that it may actually be cooler and drier here than it used to be pre 1900.

I still hold out that there must be a roysotnea that pops up here and there every now and then in a farmer's back 40 in central florida on the banks of a long forgotton pond under live oak canopy only to be killed by a freeze before anyone knew about it.

How long would it take Royals to migrate back up the peninsula to say...oh, Ruskin FL provided there were no more 1989 winters?

[spockvr6]

(ruskinPalms @ Jul. 10 2006,20:56)

QUOTE

How long would it take Royals to migrate back up the peninsula to say...oh, Ruskin FL provided there were no more 1989 winters?

Bill - From the looks of things...they are already here

[Dave-Vero]

I have some trust in birds as dispersal agents.  Acoelorraphe wrightii, the Everglades or Paurotis palm, has a Yucatan-Cuba-Florida distribution.  It had to cross water.  Hurricane-blown parrots (they don't migrate)?  Big pigeons/doves?

[NBTX11]

(ruskinPalms @ Jul. 10 2006,20:56)

QUOTE

I am not sure, but I think that people have drained sooo many wetlands here in florida that it may actually be cooler and drier here than it used to be pre 1900.

I thought they were spending millions to "Save the Everglades" and restore south Florida to previous natural conditions.

[Dave-Vero]

It's possible that drainage of the Kissimmee and upper St. Johns river basins (lots of marsh turned to cow pasture or muck farms) in the early to mid 20th century might have left things more frost-prone.  The Fellesmere agricultural area, in the southernmost St Johns River basin in Indian River County, seems more freeze and frost prone than the immediate coast, but I don't have any data.  

Both the Kissimmee and upper St. Johns are being partially restored.  I would hope for more sandhill cranes.

Miami clearly suffered bad freezes circa 1900, so I'm doubtful that there have been major changes to the local climate.

Restoration of south Florida (including the Kissimmee drainage basin from Orlando to Lake Okeechobee) will cost BILLIONS.  

For what it's worth, the Everglades are only about 5,000 years old.  The climate prior to that seems to have been drier, so I'm not sure where royal palms would have been hanging out.  A recent scientific paper suggested that worldwide climate change about 5,000 years ago set off great changes in human society that led to civilization.  So much for the Big Picture.

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Stan--

I can tell you about a royal that did NOT survive the hurricanes of 2004.  It was only a mile from me and was a total of about 50 ft. in height.  

Hurricane Frances defoliated it.  When I returned from evacuation I figured ita leaves would regorw within three months.  BUT three WEEKS later Jeanne came ashore at almost exactly the same location (8 miles south of where I live) and by the time Wilma in October (1995) hit south FL it was obvious that the two previous storms had carked the old patriarch (matriarch?).  

The county (or SOMEone finally cut up and felled the trunk earlier this year--it was within 10 ft. of a single-lane county road.

It saddened me greatly as it was significantly taller than those planted along US 1 in southern Miami, near the U. of Miami.

[Walter John]

So Robert and others, are these two palms separate species ? regia and elata ?

[Guest]

We have 6 Roystonea that are from seed collected in the Everglades. They are planted on our lakefront below the seawall here at Leu Gardens. The area is wet and mucky and after the deluges in 2004 ater the hurricanes and in 2005 they were in standing water for months at a time, after the '04 storms they were in 1-2ft of water for over a month as the lake was swollen. They are thriving and are about 6ft tall now.

Will the Cuban Roystonea grow in wet or swampy locations and in standing water?

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Wal, Roystonea elata and R. regia are definitely synonyms.

By most rules of taxonomy it should be elata as this epithet was bestowed before regia; but, in his dissertation, SZ called upon the little used addendum to the rules that allows well established epithets to be conserved at the expense of the older (and usually valid) one.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On a different note I very much wonder just how it was determined that the palms Bartram wrote about  were, indeed, Roystonea.  I don't have the text and this was before the camera and I really don't believe WB's description could be called rigorous.

Does anyone have the text or know how SZ et al. determined that these palms were Roystonea?

[richtrav]

Didn't Bernie or someone from the Central Florida society write an article about Bartram's supposed royals back in the 1990s for their bulletin? I can't remember what the conclusion was, but if they did exist at that site they would have been destroyed by the freeze of 1835.  That royal palm at Dent's is a post-89 planting, I visited there in 1990 and there were absolutely no royal palms there at the time. Everyone in the palm world would have been hysterical if a royal had survived that kind of cold

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Ricardo--

Hysterics in Florida .... the mind boggles.

You woudn't know when the first Syagrus were brought into FL, would ya?  Whenever, they probably would have arrived in the northern part of the peninsula rather than in the southern part ....

--Ye ol' historical (or hysterical) scribe

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Eric--

Roystonea definitely grow in low, swampy areas of The Everglades Natl Park.  Have never been to the Fakahatchee but I'm led to believe they there grow in permanent (or nearly permanent) shallow FRESH water.  They evidedently will not stand the presence of marine water.  

David Fairchild wrote in The World Grows Round My Door, that when he first saw the property in Miami that he subsequently bought and which later became known as "The Kampong," there were some 'native' Roystonea in the low areas of the property near the bay (Biscayne).  However, within a decade or so, these palms perished as the land they were growing in subsided and salt water overcame their roots.  I think he attributed the subsidence to development.

[BobbyinNY]

One of my favorite streets in South Florida is Las Olas Blvd in Ft. Lauderdale... the street is lined with beautiful royals all the way from the New river tunnel downtown to A1A on the beach - it's truly a paradise.

[redant]

(Robert Lee Riffle @ Jul. 17 2006,05:08)

QUOTE

Eric--

Roystonea definitely grow in low, swampy areas of The Everglades Natl Park.  Have never been to the Fakahatchee but I'm led to believe they there grow in permanent (or nearly permanent) shallow FRESH water.  They evidedently will not stand the presence of marine water.  

David Fairchild wrote in The World Grows Round My Door, that when he first saw the property in Miami that he subsequently bought and which later became known as "The Kampong," there were some 'native' Roystonea in the low areas of the property near the bay (Biscayne).  However, within a decade or so, these palms perished as the land they were growing in subsided and salt water overcame their roots.  I think he attributed the subsidence to development.

There are some wild Roystonea growing IN the Loxahatchee river, very up river from me. It appears the roots are immersed in water at each high tide (yes this area has tides). I always wondered how a little seeding got started in a situation like that. I call these guys wild but I can see the foundation of a very old home from very long ago by the bank of the river close to where this palm is located. I speculate these are babies from a Royal that was planted by the house. There are several other royals as well all in this area, but one or two are definitely in the river.

[richtrav]

Bob

Hmm I don't think that would have been what Bartram saw; from what I understand he was pretty much traveling through unchartered waters. The description Bartram gave were almost certainly royals, crownshaft and all. I'm just wondering if he got his wires crossed as to the exact place or whether there were some transcription mistakes from his journals to what was published. I know the FL peninsula was pretty mild between 1766 and 1835, and even 1766 wasn't that bad judging by the lack of damage to the citrus in St Augustine. Still, it doesn't take a once-in-a-century event to get cold at that latitude

[Dave-Vero]

The Institute for Regional Conservation, south of Miami, has a great online checklist for native plants in South Florida conservation areas.

http://www.regionalconservation.org/

Royal palm is native in Big Cypress National Preserve, Collier-Seminole State Park, Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, and Everglades National Park.  They don't have data for Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.  It's present at a lot of other sites--either naturalized or planted.  One of them is Kiplinger, in Martin County.  They call it  "Introduced, Invasive" (but there's no herbarium specimen.  The USF herbarium would appreciate one).

The nomenclatural combination Roystonea elata (W.Bartram) F.Harper was published by Francis Harper, based on his intensive research into Bartram's activities and the description that Bartram provided in his "Travels".  Harper's scholarship has been accepted ever since.   I'm impressed by Harper (see my earlier post).  One reason there's still lingering uncertainty as to whether Bartram saw Royals on the St Johns is that his journals upon which the "Travels" were based were borrowed by a prominent 19th century Philadelphia ornithologist, and he never returned them.  

Scott Zona proposed to conserve the newer specific epithet "regia" in place of the older "elata":

Zona S. 1994. (1141) Proposal to conserve Oreodoxa regia Kunth, the basionym of Roystonea regia (Kunth) O.F. Cook, against Palma elata W. Bartram (Arecaceae). Taxon 43. (4): 662-664 (1994)

Zona's proposal was accepted, and you can see the results here:

http://www.bgbm.org/iapt....NSC.htm

[Robert Lee Riffle]

Estimado Corazon de Leon--

>>> I'm just wondering if he got his wires crossed as to the exact place <<<

I can certainly relate to that condition: every time I go up that way I get my wires crossed.  In truth I can drive up to Grant and get lost .... always DO in fact ....

So .... you've read the WB account?

--the poor ol' Capricorn who has lost his way