100+ years of growth of Sabal palmetto

[Eric in Orlando]

This is the George Roe house in Orange City, FL (about 35 miles north of Orlando). It was built around 1910. Today there are some very tall Sabal palmetto surrounding the house today. You can see the growth over the century in the photos

 

Here is the house photo taken circa 1910. Palms look recently planted.

 

[Eric in Orlando]

Here is the house in 2017, 117 years later...

 

 

[SubTropicRay]

Fantastic!  Old Florida at its best!  Thanks for sharing and see you Saturday.

 

[Yunder Wækraus]

107 years of growth--amazing!

[bubba]

Sabals are beautiful. Outstanding work to document 107 years of growth. Some of those really tall Sables must be several hundred years old.

[Reeverse]

That is a great timeline! 

[Eric in Orlando]

My wife and I photograph antrebellum and Florida Cracker houses. We were up in the Orange City/DeLeon Springs/Glenwood area on Saturday. There is a real concentration of old, super tall Sabal palmetto in that area.

[Kai]

Very cool!

[annafl]

Great photos and documentation!  Wow, that's fun!  Hey, I'll see you Saturday also.  So looking forward to it.

[Cape Garrett]

Great pics Eric.  Quite a bit of history.  

[Palmaceae]

Great pictures, always like the historic pictures.

[Eric in Orlando]

There used to be a huge mansion in Orange City, the Hildreth House (later known as the Dickinson House). It was built in the 1880s and sat on a hill (Government Hill) on the west side of Orange City. It had a lane run east to Volusia Ave. (17/92). It burned down in 1932. But if you Google map the location there is a line of Sabal palmetto that still exists in the wooded lot. It is the area south of Graves Ave., east of Carpenter Ave. and west of 17/92. I tried to get photos but there wasn't any access. They were probably planted after 1900 as older photos show citrus in the front. But these groves were killed out in the Big Freezes of 1894-95.

[Eric in Orlando]

Here it is in the 1890s

 

 

And here it is with some young Sabal palmetto planted lining the lane

 

 

 

[Eric in Orlando]

And a screen shot of the location today. The house would have sat near the corner of Dixon and Carpenter. You can see the line of palms running west to east.

[TexasColdHardyPalms]

Do you know roughly how tall these are?

[Eric in Orlando]

17 hours ago, TexasColdHardyPalms said:

Do you know roughly how tall these are?

The row of palms? I'm not sure, I couldn't see them from the several locations I went to. Its a low, wet spot so lots of thick brush and trees.

 

 

[Xerarch]

So what you're saying with this post is, if you want tall Sabals and can't afford to have big ones planted, better move onto a house that already has them. 

[Eric in Orlando]

Very true!

 

 

[PalmWarbler]

Great investigative work, that's really cool to see those images.