Ronald Orenstein

[Ronald Orenstein]

I was recently given two palm clumps identified as Ravenea.  Each contains three stems the have grown closely together; I cannot tell if they are three stems of the same plant or three separate plants, but I cannot disentangle their roots.  I have photos I can post, but I cannot see how to upload a file from my computer (as opposed to from an URL).  My question is, first, are these indeed Ravenea, and second, is it safe to split them if I cannot disentangle their root systems?  Thanks in advance!

[Silas_Sancona]

On 10/10/2020 at 10:40 AM, Ronald Orenstein said:

I was recently given two palm clumps identified as Ravenea.  Each contains three stems the have grown closely together; I cannot tell if they are three stems of the same plant or three separate plants, but I cannot disentangle their roots.  I have photos I can post, but I cannot see how to upload a file from my computer (as opposed to from an URL).  My question is, first, are these indeed Ravenea, and second, is it safe to split them if I cannot disentangle their root systems?  Thanks in advance!

First off, Welcome to Palm Talk and the Forum..

As far as uploading pictures,  in the lower left hand side of the " Reply " area, you'll see the paper clip and " Drag/Attach Files " add on.. Open and choose your pictures to add to your thread.. Can't remember what the max dimensions are off the top of my head but if too large, you can go through and reduce the size of X image/images. I myself use Windows Photo Gallery and go into each photo and reduce  the pixel size to an average of 840-890 and have never had issues uploading.. Obviously, if you use something different, how you edit the pictures will be different.. Avoid Apple products myself and not sure how editing pics off their devices works.  @kinzyjr and @PALM MOD will have excellent guidance in this area as well should you encounter any other issues/ have other questions regarding uploading photos.

As far as dividing Ravenea, ( Majesty Palms ) Believe a few members here have done so successfully.. @Merlyn2220?? Was it you that tried this recently?.. Anyway, depending on where you're located, you may have to wait until spring to divide.  Many big box nurseries stuff 3 or more seedlings together to get a fuller looking plant to sell. Naturally, they are solitary, ie: don't produce suckers/offsets ( Clump ).  Some like the look as they grow, but when clumped together, they will tend to grow slower than if planted individually.

Regardless, welcome and good luck.

-Nathan

[kinzyjr]

@Ronald Orenstein Welcome to the forums!  You should be able to upload photos by clicking on the "choose files..." link at the bottom of the posting dialog.

[Merlyn]

10 minutes ago, Silas_Sancona said:

As far as dividing Ravenea, ( Majesty Palms ) Believe a few members here have done so successfully.. @Merlyn2220?? Was it you that tried this recently?..

I did this successfully with both Majesty (Ravenea Rivularis) and Chinese (Livistona Chinensis).  Majesties split apart pretty easy, I actually just used a big kukri knife to slice down between the plants.  I chopped the pot essentially into thirds, being careful to not cut into the caudex of any of the three palms.  The Livistona I washed apart with a hose, the details are here:

For photos I use GIMP.  It's a freeware image editing software, easy to crop, do basic color adjustments, and scale to a reasonable size.  I typically scale to 1920x1080 resolution (or around there) and save at 85% quality.  The forum says it has a 250kB limit for non-IPS members, but I think they removed that restriction some time ago.  The above scaling ends up with about an 800kB file, which is good enough to see all the details without being a huge file.