Pindo Questions

[Astro]

Are there any Pindo Palm Specialists out there?
Would you guys mind sharing what you know about harvesting pindo fruit, cleaning pindo seeds, planting the seeds, growing the palms etc.
Any info you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Seed Cleaning Method: I use hardware cloth which is like a tight grid chicken wire laid over a large planing pot.

Rub Rub Rub the seeds.... gently down the screen
merrily merrily merrily... rinse them with a hose.

The hardware cloth makes short work of stripping the pindo seeds heavy fruit.
This technique is proven affective on most medium to large sized seeds.
I'll place the seeds into deep cell liner trays one per cell, water them in & place in direct sunlight.

Would planting this seed "eyes up" offer any advantages?
Is there a proper way to place the seeds in the dirt?
How often do the seeds produce singles doubles triples?

Pindo Palm Jelly?

I found this recipe.

2 cups prepared palm fruit juice

3 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup liquid fruit pectin

Remove pits from palm fruit, barely cover with water and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes. Crush fruit and strain through a jellybag. Measure into a saucepan. Add sugar to juice and mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. At once stir in pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, skim off foam and pour quickly into hot, clean jars. For long term storage, the USDA reccommends heat processing all jams and jellies in a waterbath canner for 5 to 10 minutes.
Yield about 4, 8 ounce jars.

[Astro]

No one is growing these in bulk?

[paulgila]

just as singles.

[paulgila]

just as singles.

[DoomsDave]

(Astro @ Jul. 18 2006,15:09)

QUOTE

No one is growing these in bulk?

Astro!

Nice to meet you!

Glad to hear someone really loves pindos.

However, I would not expect them to be a big crop.  The primary problem is that it takes a long while to get them to bear fruit from seed, and, seedling fruit is often of uneven quality.

That said, some of them are DELICIOUS, just like apricots.

They certainly grow like gangbusters here in So-Cal.  Maybe Fred from Zone 10 will show pix of his.

dave

[Astro]

Hey Thanks Dave.

I understand how most people must feel.

Pindos are common palms & seem not to offer much excitement.

Lets look at the plants advantages.

It's tolerant of cold & frost.

The seeds are readily available / free.

The trees are widely used as a commercial landscape palms.

any others?

It seems to me Pindos might be worth taking a stab at.

Once they've grown into a three gallon pot, Pindos might have some nice value.

In winter... you don't have to think twice about the occasional cold spell.

I've grown these in the past. I just wondered if there were any tricks to growing them in bulk.

I remember conversations on the forum about the spiral leaf formation of healthy pindo palms.

Also, the percentage of singles doubles & triples per 100 seeds planted.

Do you know anything about that?

2nd time to the forum today*

[Fred Zone 10A]

Pindos are common palms & seem not to offer much excitement.

Lets look at the plants advantages.

It's tolerant of cold & frost.

The seeds are readily available / free.

The trees are widely used as a commercial landscape palms.

any others?

They are great looking palms.

Grey-green leaves.

Moderately fast growing once they start to trunk.

Fruit is tasty--even my dog likes them.

You can make pindo ice cream.

Here at the office I don't have a photo of one of my three Butia capitata, but here's one I took of elHoagie next to a Butia paraguayensis at the Huntington Botanical Garden.

[Kathryn]

Paul,

These are one of my favorites also. I tried germinating seeds several years ago without much luck.

After I collected the seed, I soaked them overnight in a container on my patio. When I went out in the morning, something, probably a squirrel, had gotten into the container and spread many of the seeds around the patio. I collected them up and cleaned them by rubbing off the pulp under running water - using rubber gloves to prevent my hands from turning orange. I put the seeds in bags on a heat mat. After about six months, nothing had happened, so I forgot about them.

The next year, I noticed several seedlings in my beds around the patio and realized they were some more Butia capitata that the squirrels had spread. I did some research and found that the seeds germinate best with fluctuating temperatures versus the constant heat I was using. I took the bags of seed, emptied them in my flowerbeds and more seedlings came up.

I now do this with many seeds and just mark the area so I will know what I planted - At first, I didn't do this and my memory is not as good as it once was.

Yesterday I was showing a friend some B. armata seedlings I had sown in a flowerbed two years ago when I realized they had some spines - they were actually Acrocomia.

Kathryn

[Dave-Vero]

The Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew had an impressive Butia yatay.  

My only expertise in Butia capitata is from having a flock of young ones in my former yard in Jacksonville, Florida.  They were all seedlings from bigger ones in the neighborhood, no doubt planted by squirrels, just like Kathryn's.  They grew well in partial shade, and my only failing was in not providing them beds large enough to include all the leaf span.  Cutting grass under one of the plants led me to suffering a punctured ear drum from the sharp tip of a leaflet.  Naturally it was on Saturday of a Labor Day weekend.  It healed by itself, without incident, except that it was really weird to go to the symphony and not be able to hear the music in the usual 3 dimensions.

Pindos make beautiful specimens as youngsters if you give them a big bed and don't prune them.  In many respects, they're better at providing a silvery mound than Bismarkias, which develop trunks much faster.  A young almost-trunkless Pindo takes up nearly as much space as a Bizzie of similar height.  

Another trick is to plant pindos in clumps.  Provided of course that you've installed effective permanent landscape cloth/mulch to avoid having to weed the area.

Finally, they grow nicely near the beach here in Florida, and there's a healthy older one in my neighborood.  It's so old, the original house on the lot was torn down and replaced with a new one!

[NBTX11]

(Dave-Vero @ Jul. 18 2006,21:22)

QUOTE

The Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew had an impressive Butia yatay.  

My only expertise in Butia capitata is from having a flock of young ones in my former yard in Jacksonville, Florida.  They were all seedlings from bigger ones in the neighborhood, no doubt planted by squirrels, just like Kathryn's.  They grew well in partial shade, and my only failing was in not providing them beds large enough to include all the leaf span.  Cutting grass under one of the plants led me to suffering a punctured ear drum from the sharp tip of a leaflet.  Naturally it was on Saturday of a Labor Day weekend.  It healed by itself, without incident, except that it was really weird to go to the symphony and not be able to hear the music in the usual 3 dimensions.

Pindos make beautiful specimens as youngsters if you give them a big bed and don't prune them.  In many respects, they're better at providing a silvery mound than Bismarkias, which develop trunks much faster.  A young almost-trunkless Pindo takes up nearly as much space as a Bizzie of similar height.  

Another trick is to plant pindos in clumps.  Provided of course that you've installed effective permanent landscape cloth/mulch to avoid having to weed the area.

Finally, they grow nicely near the beach here in Florida, and there's a healthy older one in my neighborood.  It's so old, the original house on the lot was torn down and replaced with a new one!

How big is this old Pindo.  What is the max height they get.

[Kris]

Fred thanks for the photo.please post more pictures of these palms if you have it.

I have mistaken these palms to CIDP. this palms also looks

very impressive.if other members are growing these palms kindly upload those pictures.

and as far as the dog eating the fruits,my doggies love mangoes from our trees. they even fight amoung themselves to get a big share of it !

one man one tree..

Love,

Kris (from South India).

[paulgila]

venerable old butia capitata(i believe) at the san diego zoo.gotta love those "boots"!

[Dave-Vero]

In Florida, Pindos seem to reach only about 6-7 meters (ie, the height of 3 or 4 people), but it might take 40 years to reach that height.

The best way to figure out the potential would be to find an owner who's cared for a palm for at least 20 years, being careful to maintain a bed around it (to prevent lawn maintenance damage) and also being careful to remove only dead leaves.  Many pindos are badly over-trimmed.

[ViveroLaVida]

here are some old Butia capitata in Montevideo the capital city of Uruguay.

Very impresive in person. Not sure how old these are but i bet they were transplnted from natural habitat quite large to begin with.

[Dave-Vero]

Wow!

We Floridians are doing badly by mistakenly thinking Pindos are "stupid little palms"

I also wonder whether our cultivated material properly represents what's available in the wild.  I've had a feeling we haven't fully taken advantage of the palms of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina.  Parts of the region have climates similar to Florida.

[SunnyFl]

There was a "Pindo" next door.  I believe - tho I'm not very knowledgeable - it was actually an eriospatha.   It seemed too green to be a capitata, but it was definitely a Butia.

It was there when we bought this place back in '89.  The neighbor who owned it said that many years before, it had been knocked over by a storm and he hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it.  After some years, he was gone and new people moved in.

It continued to grow where it had blown over.  Its stout trunk was reclining so much that it was almost horizontal - only the crown and a bit below was growing vertically.  The effect was quite beautiful.

Was.

One awful day I came home to find the palm completely gone.  They'd hacked it up and hauled it to the dump.

I could've cried - I would have paid someone to move it over to my yard.

[Dave-Vero]

In Jacksonville, my circa 1950 neighborhood included a house around the corner from me with two beautiful mature pindos and a sort of hedge of Christmas amaryllises.  First the amaryllises went, then the pindos.  I think they simply had landscapers cut them down.  At least they could have sold it to the palm buyer who kept tabs on nice specimens (he liked my younger ones).  Then there were the people up the street who removed a huge native magnolia, a remnant of the original magnolia-hickory forest.

[Robert Lee Riffle]

In my neighborhood there was an enormous (for the area) Ficus benghalensis more than 30 ft. wide and at least that tall.  It covered most of the front yard of the house.  

And then one day (within one day) I drove by and there was NOTHING left except an ugly and nasty, skinny water oak that had grown up and through the old giant.

I know an "arborist" company convinced the old couple who lived there that unless they removed the ficus it would eat their house and grandchildren.

Now there are gloriously trashy oleanders and annuals "brightening" the spot .... in case I haven't communicated it, the last statement is sarcastic.

[Astro]

landscapes occasionally change,

people have been known to do crazy things,

sometimes... things that once were, aren't anymore.

back to learning more about Pindo Palms:

does anyone have any unique Pindo photos?

un-circulated Pindo fruit recipes? can this palm's fruit be jar'ed-up?

or do you have any information regarding planting this palm from seed in bulk?

[Dave-Vero]

The old forum, now available again, has some wonderful photos of pindos grown in a bit of shade in the Dallas area.  People forget how long and lush the leaves can be on young, well-cared-for plants.  Especially those that haven't been de-leafed by landscape maintenance crews.

[DoomsDave]

I admonish and beg Fred to post pix of his glorious pindos, one of which is starting to set fruit.

The very first palm I saw, in the flesh, growing outside, was a mature Pindo in Virginia Beach, VA in 1975, about 20 feet (6.666 m) tall, a little gnarly, but I was agog.  Wow, look, Mom!  A palm tree outside!  (She missed it, said I was hallucinating . . . .)

dave

[Alicehunter2000]

Posted this before but thought it was relevant. A almost perfectly symetrical 4 headed pindo. (with an atrocious hair cut I might add).

I still think NW Florida is the Butia Capita of the U.S. They are almost more common than Sabal's. I love them just the same. My dad has 10 or so Pindo's that are at least 50 years old in his yard, I will try to get some pictures. They average 15 ft. or more of clear trunk, but he has not fertilized them for years and years.

There are some around town (Panama City) that gotta have 20 or 25 ft. of clear trunk on them. One day I will get some photo's of the larger ones.

[Astro]

There's this squirrel that keeps plucking un ripened fruit off my Pindo Palm.

He's found the best place to eat his fruit. My roof top.

He can munch until his hearts content while keeping an eye out for any danger that might be coming his way. When he's done chomping the green fruit he tosses the seeds down the roof allowing it to roll down until it lands in the rain gutter with a loud ~ Tink! ~.

My questions is: in the old days I would have shot this squirrel & had him for dinner. No one would have cared much about it. But now-a-days shooting a squirrel might be seen as cruel.

What's your opinion.

I thought I own the tree & it's seeds.

I guess it's his tree & I'm just tryin' to get a nut.

Ps.. I'll post pictures if any of the rain gutter seeds sprout off the side of the house.

[amazon exotics]

Without Pindo's, think of the great crosses we would be missing. Love those Pindos.

[cryptobionic]

Astro-

As common as squirrels may be (along with other critters), they are a good indicator of a healthy garden. I hear complaints from people about squirrels eating precious plant seedlings, but the basic solution is always overlooked: feed the suckers! A small amount of sunflowers, peanuts, bread, etc. offered on a regular basis assures that your pampered plants will be ignored by squirrels, birds, racoons, rats, or whatever. Just think of all the free high-quality fertilizer!  

My unripe Pindo fruits share the same fate, I can see and hear the squirrels gnawing on them all day. If you don't plan on harvesting the seeds for germination, nothing is lost. Personally, I celebrated the arrival of the first squirrels on my property, it proved that my humble garden finally made it to the top and could be ranked as a piece of woodland (albeit an artificial one).

Please save your bullets for real monsters, like Zombies.

[Kris]

Dear Cryptobionic,

i like your attitude on symboiatic co-existance between human,animals & plants.I think those squrriels are new commers to your gardens.even i had the same attitude towards them 3 years back !  

Now whereever i see them nesting,they usually prefer our bedroom windows since it is cool due to our Air-con.and on my phoenix palms i remove their nesting as quick as possible,if not their are baby squrriels in them.

gradually they have began to shift their operation to my neighbours residence.  

You will like to know what these little fellas are doing in my garden_

1. they rip all the new leaves from the palm trees to build their nest/house.

2. they carry away the seeds of exocitic plants,they dig and place it on the floor here & there.

3.they aggrivate our dogs to chase them in the prosses all the terracota pots are turned topsy turvy.most often either the plant or the pot is totally damaged.

4.we have jasmine flower growing and it happens to be my mom's favouriate,but our friends cut the leaves which contain unflowered buds in them.

5.they damage our curtains and garments so that they can built their homes.

your attitude on squrreils will change one day, i hope at that time you dont kill them_pal

squrriels & rodents are nothing but memace,never grow or encourage them,this is my humble advice to our forum members.So wake up...

[Dave-Vero]

Eastern grey squirrels at home in North America are slightly different beasts from the ones that were introduced to England (evidently someone thought they were cute), where they tear up gardens and outcompete the little red British squirrels.

Eastern North America doesn't have the squirrel mess that prevails in Portland, Oregon, where easterns, fox squirrels, whatever, were let loose and run amok.  Not to mention that they have Nutria.  At least there's few palms to mess with.

Native fox squirrels are doing OK on golf courses in the Naples, Florida area (they depend on Syagrus romanzoffiana fruit, as shown by a doctoral dissertation), but that seems not to have happened elsewhere.

[DoomsDave]

Fred!

Love the avatar!

Hmm.  Maybe some Pindo Ice Cream?

dave

[Astro]

squirrel ice cream...

[GREENHAND]

there are alot growing in the destin area , some are pretty nice

[GREENHAND]

another at he visitor center when antering FLA,

[_Keith]

Come on, post more Pindos.

[Moose]

I've killed Pindos on two seperate attempts. My suspicion is that it does not get cool enough in the winter for these palms. But there are other good looking Pindos around. Its a beautiful palm that I would love to have, just accepted I have a black thumb with them ...

[_Keith]

I've killed Pindos on two seperate attempts. My suspicion is that it does not get cool enough in the winter for these palms. But there are other good looking Pindos around. Its a beautiful palm that I would love to have, just accepted I have a black thumb with them ...

Moose, I think you are absolutely right in that they need cold, especially to look their best. After two very mild winters in a row down here, nearly every Pindo I see is looking especially ratty. Judging by how other fruit trees perform here, I'd say they thrive with 300-400 chilling hours.