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What’s your dirty little secret? Show us your most neglected palm.


chad2468emr

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We all probably have one... or a few, haha.

For whatever reason there’s those one or two (or more?) palms that you’ve either neglected, forgotten about, or made one too many mistakes with and it’s.... not looking it’s best. Most of the time on here, want to talk about, look at, learn how to keep, or share pictures of healthy, thriving palms. But let’s see your dirty little secret! Show us the palms you’ve got that really aren’t in the best of shape - and tell us how they got that way, and if you’re doing anything to fix them up. 

I’ll go first! Out of all the high-maintenance, finicky, and zone-pushed palms I’ve got, there’s a cat palm in my living room of all things that is really in rough shape. Despite being the only plant in my living room, (the rest of my house is filled with plants, haha) I’ve managed to seriously push one of the easiest, most common palms to care for to the brink.

It’s probably lost about 70% of it’s fronds and suckers in the last four months. I think I’ve maybe watered it once in the last three months? It also had a bad spat with spider mites over the winter and is really under-fertilized. It might even have some kind of fungus or something in the crown due to the black stuff around the bases of the petioles. It also grows these weird, malformed fronds that never seem to really open all the way and there are some signs of manganese deficiency. I cleaned it up today and gave it some TLC, but it’s still not looking quite right. Here it is in all its scraggly, weird, glory: (the pics do not do it’s sadness justice haha) 

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Former South Florida resident living in the Greater Orlando Area, zone 9b.

Constantly wishing I could still grow zone 10 palms worry-free, but also trying to appease my strange fixation with Washingtonias. 

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I'll have to take pics when I get off my butt to take the dog out, but a Rhapis Exelcea. I literally water it when the soil is crunchy. It looks great though, so I'm not gonna question it. 

 

Meanwhile, my indoor c. Cataractarum - it gets misted pretty much daily but as far as actual watering...

 

My dog won't drink out of a bowl, he only drinks out of big fast food cups - and when I change his water, I just dump whatever is left into the cat palm. It seems happy, it's throwing new leaves left and right and is almost as tall as me now. 

Message_1619579984915.jpg

Message_1619580153698.jpg

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Pick me! Pick me!

After watching Youtube videos on how to separate Dypsis lutescens, I got really carried away and separated a single bucket into two buckets + some for the atrium. Looked amazing initially, and the separation process was oddly satisfying. Ended up separating them into almost completely individual stalks, because I like the "open" look and didn't have the heart to just cut off the baby ones (thought I was being kind by separating the babies off instead of cutting them off). HUGE mistake.

Every single stalk was "fried" and I thought I killed the entire plant. Happily, I'm starting to see some green and bright yellow returning, so at least the younger ones will get to live another day.

* I next separated a group of chamaedorea costaricana, but was MUCH more conservative with those, and didn't lose a single stalk. Lesson learned - don't overdo it when separating!

dypsis2.jpg

dypsis3.jpg

dypsis1.jpg

 

Edited by idesign123
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Stacey Wright  |  Graphic Designer

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For me it's basically all my backyard palms. I'm on the road 5-6 days(usually 5) a week & when I come home I pack orders, spend time with family, chip away at the honey-do list then back on the road. All my backyard palms have weeds around them & don't get much eye attention.  I have everything set up on a drip system so no worries on the water, although my front yard gets drip plus water hose from time to time. Backyard rarely gets supplemental hose water. I usually wake up, have my coffee :interesting: as I'm walking around out front then hit some stuff with the hose if I have time. I'm falling behind on the stuff I needed to plant out this year, I should have had most of it done by now.. wish I could clone myself,  then I'd send my clone off to work Lol!

I could be wrong but I think most people tend to an area or palm before they get that picture to post here, I do :floor:. For sake of this thread I might take some pictures the way they are & show some dirty little secrets :blush:

  • Like 1

Hesperia,Southern CA (High Desert area). Zone 8b

Elevation; about 3600 ft.

Lowest temp. I can expect each year 19/20*f lowest since I've been growing palms *13(2007) Hottest temp. Each year *106

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I feel like I copped out by posting that cat palm since it’s pictures really don’t do how sad it looks justice. Haha so here’s the three other secrets I’ve got! 

Last winter I’d gotten a hair up my you know what and decided that I needed to tear my licuala grandis + summawongii and my chambreyonia macrocarpa out of their pots to see if they had root rot since they weren’t drying. They did, but there were maybe 2-3 decent sized roots out of everything that looked black. A lot of the others were brown but I’m not even 100% sure it was rot looking back on it. Well... I cut off everything that wasn’t white and then potted in a mix of leca, bark, perlite, and a smidge of peat soil so they had better draining mixes.

Welp. I REALLY “saved” them because despite not having had a single frond actually yellow before I decided to “help”, they then slowly desiccated no matter what I did and are presently left in this condition. The only one with any sign of growth at all since January is the grandis, which has maybe pushed a whole 1/4 inch of that half opened frond out. The summawongii has a little button of a spear that hasn’t moved and a frond that stopped opening and now sits looking like a folded up ornamental fan. The flamethrower has a spear that hit a hard PAUSE and hasn’t budged a cm since. 

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The lesson? If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT. They hadn’t yellowed at all or shown any above-soil signs of rot so my panicking and over-correcting caused them to lose 5 fronds each for the Licuala and 2 for the flamethrower. This was my beautiful, lovely summawongii just after I’d mangled it before losing all those fronds. Ugh. It kills me to look back at this haha. 

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Edited by chad2468emr
  • Like 3

Former South Florida resident living in the Greater Orlando Area, zone 9b.

Constantly wishing I could still grow zone 10 palms worry-free, but also trying to appease my strange fixation with Washingtonias. 

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6 hours ago, James760 said:

I could be wrong but I think most people tend to an area or palm before they get that picture to post here, I do :floor:. For sake of this thread I might take some pictures the way they are & show some dirty little secrets :blush:

Haha exactly! That’s what I’m trying to get at. I tend to be a little obsessive and neurotic and keep things pretty put-together most of the time, but you can bet I still fix things up a little bit before sharing a picture hahaha 

Former South Florida resident living in the Greater Orlando Area, zone 9b.

Constantly wishing I could still grow zone 10 palms worry-free, but also trying to appease my strange fixation with Washingtonias. 

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Groot, my first palm, looks like absolute poop. Started as a houseplant, and I had terrible fungus gnat problems. In about a year and a half, I've repotted him 3 times.  The first pot had no drainage, so I took a box cutter to it and bought a saucer. 2nd pot was too small. I def wouldn't call him neglected, he's just growing very short and wide.... And very yellow. 

 

Bought one of those cutesy braided bonsai money trees off of Etsy. I guess I overwatered it, as I lost the 5 plants one by one.

Killed a small cherry Chinese evergreen - I realized it was overpotted, and I went to untangle the roots and thought "oh weird, there's a really long hair tangled up." Welp. It wasn't a hair. 

 

Killed a coffee plant by overpotting it. 

 

Calathea dried out during snowpacalypse when I was snowed in at work for 10 days. 

 

Bought 2 palms mail order bare root in January. They lasted about a week. Guess they got too cold in shipping. 

 

Also went full rookie and bought 5 different kinds of fertilizer/plant food.

Spent a lot of money on expensive potting soil before I learned to just buy cheap crap and amend it myself for drainage. 

 

Spent hours and hours trying to split a $10 p. Roebelleini, which is probably gonna die in my office. 

 

I could write a book on all the rookie mistakes I've made. 

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For me it's this little bismarkia that I grew from seed.  I just put it in the ground and don't really tend to it.  I water it when I remember.  I didn't even bother to protect it during this past arctic blast.  

20210428_075427.jpg

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17 hours ago, idesign123 said:

Pick me! Pick me!

After watching Youtube videos on how to separate Dypsis lutescens, I got really carried away and separated a single bucket into two buckets + some for the atrium. Looked amazing initially, and the separation process was oddly satisfying. Ended up separating them into almost completely individual stalks, because I like the "open" look and didn't have the heart to just cut off the baby ones (thought I was being kind by separating the babies off instead of cutting them off). HUGE mistake.

Every single stalk was "fried" and I thought I killed the entire plant. Happily, I'm starting to see some green and bright yellow returning, so at least the younger ones will get to live another day.

* I next separated a group of chamaedorea costaricana, but was MUCH more conservative with those, and didn't lose a single stalk. Lesson learned - don't overdo it when separating!

dypsis2.jpg

dypsis3.jpg

dypsis1.jpg

 

I think we have a winner! LOL

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58 minutes ago, Johnny Palmseed said:

I think we have a winner! LOL

Thank you, thank you all.

I was really embarrassed to post those photos, but was hoping someone would at least get a laugh out of my stupidity.

I'm much more proud of my attempt to separate the chamaedorea costaricana... Here's a photo of that (much better) job - just took the photo now with no cleanup before taking the shot. This group started out as two extremely root-bound 15 gallons, and they're now spread out a lot more.  Separation was done over two months ago and so far they seem to be doing fine (haven't lost any stalks, and am seeing lots of new growth). So my current score is: Costaracana +1 | Dypsis lutescens 0

Fingers crossed I'm on a better track now with my separation efforts. Though I'm sure I'll find plenty more things to mess up on.

costaricana.jpg

Edited by idesign123
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Stacey Wright  |  Graphic Designer

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My dirty little secrets :blush:

Chamaedorea Radicalis in to much sun

20210429_080918.thumb.jpg.60e2ba4ecaa61a6bdd19f4e2879951d7.jpg

There's a Phoenix Acaulis somewhere in there.. 

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Sabal Minor & Sabal Palmetto20210429_080842.thumb.jpg.7d9fe0a1490065b472b41bb5e13b46a5.jpg

Livistona Decora, hopefully I can get these ugly fences off the palms, waiting on my Dog to out grow the chewy up stuff age...

20210429_122931.thumb.jpg.9674211d3e8051889dd0f61e2286c9f2.jpg

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Hesperia,Southern CA (High Desert area). Zone 8b

Elevation; about 3600 ft.

Lowest temp. I can expect each year 19/20*f lowest since I've been growing palms *13(2007) Hottest temp. Each year *106

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3 hours ago, James760 said:

My dirty little secrets :blush:

Chamaedorea Radicalis in to much sun

20210429_080918.thumb.jpg.60e2ba4ecaa61a6bdd19f4e2879951d7.jpg

There's a Phoenix Acaulis somewhere in there.. 

20210429_122952.thumb.jpg.61fa6d578a23740585caa2f57d5ef742.jpg

Sabal Minor & Sabal Palmetto20210429_080842.thumb.jpg.7d9fe0a1490065b472b41bb5e13b46a5.jpg

Livistona Decora, hopefully I can get these ugly fences off the palms, waiting on my Dog to out grow the chewy up stuff age...

20210429_122931.thumb.jpg.9674211d3e8051889dd0f61e2286c9f2.jpg

Same here about the dog haha! He's 6.5 months old now, he's starting to chew the plants less. I got a Washingtonia robusta that he chewed all the fronds off, so I put some chicken wire around it. When the palm gets too big for the chicken wire, I'll remove it, I'll take my chances.

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Definitly my Raphis Exelsa. I just did not care much for this palm and found it boring as hell. its in horrible clay soil with seemingly no nutrients, it gets too much sun and has some winter damage. It is 10x worse in real life. 

IMG_20210108_172753471.jpg

Edited by Palmfarmer
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On 4/30/2021 at 12:27 PM, James760 said:

My dirty little secrets :blush:

Chamaedorea Radicalis in to much sun

20210429_080918.thumb.jpg.60e2ba4ecaa61a6bdd19f4e2879951d7.jpg

There's a Phoenix Acaulis somewhere in there.. 

20210429_122952.thumb.jpg.61fa6d578a23740585caa2f57d5ef742.jpg

Sabal Minor & Sabal Palmetto20210429_080842.thumb.jpg.7d9fe0a1490065b472b41bb5e13b46a5.jpg

Livistona Decora, hopefully I can get these ugly fences off the palms, waiting on my Dog to out grow the chewy up stuff age...

20210429_122931.thumb.jpg.9674211d3e8051889dd0f61e2286c9f2.jpg

Damn. You got a couple nice examples of neglect there. Water, water, water….

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This is by far my most neglected indoor palm.  Chamaedorea elegans probably gets watered once or twice a month, but it still looks good and pushes the occasional new leaf.  Doesn't seem to mind a fairly dark area.  Highly recommend this species for indoor culture.

 

IMG_20210502_134037.jpg

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Jon Sunder

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1 hour ago, Fusca said:

Highly recommend this species for indoor culture

Totally agree. If you want an easy indoor palm that actually gets some sort of “trunk” if not crowded 100 to a pot, I definitely recommend this species as well. 

My c. elegans gets very little attention, and very little light. It gets fairly bright indirect light for a few hours in the morning, but then mostly dark the rest of the day. After getting this older double at a nursery a few months ago, they’ve really taken off and filled their crowns out well despite my lack of attention. Maybe gets watered every 1.5 months. They seem to like being dry, almost. 

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Former South Florida resident living in the Greater Orlando Area, zone 9b.

Constantly wishing I could still grow zone 10 palms worry-free, but also trying to appease my strange fixation with Washingtonias. 

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Well, haha, I pay so little attention to it, in-fact, that I didn’t even realize it was developing an inflorescence! I took it outside after writing this post since it was way overdue for a watering, and found this. Definitely never had an indoor palm put one of these out, and especially not a palm I’ve so consistently ignored haha. C66225E0-FF76-43C2-A709-B46BFA0ABF9F.thumb.jpeg.c80a6bb65f304eaec84c03a4bd1ea1a3.jpeg

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Former South Florida resident living in the Greater Orlando Area, zone 9b.

Constantly wishing I could still grow zone 10 palms worry-free, but also trying to appease my strange fixation with Washingtonias. 

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This one hasn't been watered for more than a year, maybe more. I think it is a Mediterranean fan palm.

IMG_20210502_143043.jpg

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2 hours ago, tacobender said:

This one hasn't been watered for more than a year, maybe more. I think it is a Mediterranean fan palm.

IMG_20210502_143043.jpg

Beautiful shot, if you crop out the Chamaerops!  Poor thing must not be very salt tolerant.

3 hours ago, chad2468emr said:

C66225E0-FF76-43C2-A709-B46BFA0ABF9F.thumb.jpeg.c80a6bb65f304eaec84c03a4bd1ea1a3.jpeg

Mine actually flowered indoors as well last year.  Same gender apparently as the flowers look identical to mine.  Not sure which though.

Jon Sunder

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6 hours ago, tacobender said:

This one hasn't been watered for more than a year, maybe more. I think it is a Mediterranean fan palm.

IMG_20210502_143043.jpg

I think we have a winner.

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Hyophorbe lagenicaulis undergoing banzai culture. This guy, along with three siblings, has been experiencing benign neglect in a 3 gallon pot for over 20 years.  Amazing that it continues under such circumstances. Considering that they have survived this long I don't have the heart to trash them but I have no desire to plant them out either so they sit.

DO4Nl35.jpg

pGAOnU1.jpg

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How about two inches of compost and a nicer pot ?  :)

( I have a Chamaedorea metallica residing in a 1-gallon pot for 35 years !)

San Francisco, California

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