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Got this view last week of some of my Lord Howe Island 🏝 Palms from the upper deck.

The new larger palms that have been donated to the gardens have tucked themselves in well with all the recent rains. Kindly donated by Colin Wilson the largest ones and a few smaller ones by myself. A nice group planting of some joeys and a single kerriodoxa along with a lanonia dasyantha they are established and just need time to get up and growing. But there in the garden and will be gor the years to come.

Some pioneer palms for the new garden, they will help in creating a microclimate, planting them along with a few trees will help to start a canopy. And also break up the harder more difficult areas to garden in, once the ground has shade in my climate it completely changes, more moisture means better growing conditions. You just have to make that start with new plants sooner or later!

I was recently in Chesapeake/VA Beach and the palms are doing really well down there!

With so many new palms in the greenhouse I wish to give them a bit of a head start in life, and what better way than to make raised beds by terracing the slope . Creating two affects new real estate for palms and by creating a swail affect for retaining more moisture. Iam sure there will be something in the greenhouse to plant out

What a privilege to visit Phil’s garden and wholesale nursery (Eumundi Palms) on the Sunshine Coast. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since moving up to Queensland more than 3 years ago now!!!. The stand out for me was this incredible Cyrtostachys renda hybrid (C. renda x C. elegans). Hopefully one day it’ll produce viable seed, and there will be no shortage of customers for the resulting palms I’m sure, as they thrive in the sub-tropics.

One of those palms folks can’t help but stare at in amazement, Neoveitchia storckii.

I thought some people might be interested in unusual inflorescences and fruit. I’ll start with Iriartea deltoidea from Central and South America. Not sure if it will succeed outside the tropics, but it is a winner in Hawaii. The reason I’m featuring it is the odd placement of the inflorescence. Most palms develop flowers in or just below the crown of fronds. Iriartea is distinctive in that the inflorescence takes perhaps 5 years to develop. During that time the trunk keeps growing pushing the crown up. By the time the mature inflorescence sheds the long, horn-like bracts (front tree) to expose the flowers (back tree), there might be 10-20 ft of bare trunk between the crown and the much lower inflorescence. This is the first time mine have flowered. I think it looks very cool especially because the smooth gray trunk is slightly swollen in the middle. Mine still have pretty modest stilt roots. Maybe they will become more impressive with age. Next up is a frequently featured palm, Kerridoxa elegans. This is widely grown for the amazing entire leaves. Unfortunately, the occasional cold nights on the mainland may stunt its growth enough so that many folks have never seen a mature trunking female loaded with fruit. Mine pretty consistently bloom in January and February with the fruit ripening in late October. I only have one male and so must hand pollinate the four females scattered around the garden. But the clumps of pale yellow fruit are worth the effort. This one is about 12 years old and 12 ft tall starting from a 3 gallon pot. These may be understory palms, but they are NOT miniatures. Prestoea acuminata looks like any typical large pinnate palm, but for me the selling point is the newly opened inflorescence. It is initially brilliant white and resembles a frozen lightening bolt. It is very eye-catching. After the bees are done with it, the rachis gradually turns pink and then deep red (right side, difficult to see). Several inflorescences of different ages might be displayed on the same tree producing a colorful show. Marojejya darianii is the primary reason for this post. I have eight in the ground and add another every few years so I always have younger trees without trunks. For my taste, the most attractive stage of their life cycle is when a dozen huge entire leaves seem to erupt directly out of the ground. After they get tall, the tattered fronds don’t look all that much different from your average pinnate palm. Just about every photo on Palmpedia is from gardens in Hawaii plus a few from Australia. This is truly sad because every palm collector should have these in their landscape. I would really like to get seed and do a little propagation. My oldest trees have been blooming prolifically for about five years. The deep red-violet inflorescence is very attractive, but 90% of them have only male flowers pumping out huge amounts of pollen. Rarely a rachis will have male flowers distally and larger female flowers towards the base. I have no idea what causes most to be all male and only a few to have both sexes. Fertilizer? Rainfall? Cloud cover? Age? Random chance? When I find these special inflorescences, I shake pollen over them every day that the female flowers appear open. This has been a total failure. Not a single fruit, ever! Whenever I visit a palm friend growing these I always ask if they get fruit. Most say no, never. A few people do get fruit. When I ask how they encourage production of female flowers and successful pollination, they claim to do absolutely nothing. The trees do all the work. I have always suspected that they are just unwilling to divulge the recipe of their secret sauce. Last week I was trimming dead fronds in the garden and went to work on a Marojejya that is far from all the other and a bit inaccessible. I rarely visit this one up close. I’ve never tried any type of assisted fertility on this one. I originally got it as a one gallon from Mike in Kurtistown a dozen years ago. As I was cutting away old fronds, I uncovered two developing infructescences loaded with immature green fruit. The fruit was obscured by all the distal dead ends where the male flowers had been last October. After cutting those away, I got a better look at the developing fruit. There were also hundreds of dried up, pea-sized aborted fruits that I have been well acquainted with for years. These have probably been developing for about 8 months. They appear to be about 25% the size of mature seeds. I cut one open and it had a central cavity filled with a clear gel. Presumably this will expand and solidify by the time they are ripe. This doesn’t guarantee babies down the road, but it is a big step beyond anything I've gotten before. Looks like those palm friends who professed to doing nothing to assist pollination might have been telling the truth after all. Here are a few gratuitous photos from the garden. A baby that recently went in the ground near a spreading monkeypod tree that should provide good canopy. This is my favorite one that was squashed in January 2024 by a mass of falling trees filled with heavy vines. [Scroll up to the January 18, 2024 post] I’d say this has made a pretty impressive recovery after that near death experience. For scale the Anthurium cupulispathum leaves are 4-5 ft long. I deliberately planted this one to have dense canopy from the foreground tree ferns and the soon-to-be giant blue marble tree out of frame on the left. I’m trying to recreate light and wind protection conditions that in other gardens have produced palms with exceptionally large fronds. Blue marble trunk on the right. We'll find out in 10 years if my plan worked.

I took some more random pics of that area of my proprty that I posted up a few posts ago. Like I said, still a work in progress and some stuff that was planted in a few years ago before I cut down and dug out the Chinaberrys are complety overtaken with grass and weeds .... that'll be the last area I get cleaned up. It's literally pull some weeds around one plant, dump bag of mulch, move onto next area and rinse and repeat ... and of course it's hot in the sun. Enjoy. -Matt

I lied about my Bismarckia it’s about to open it’s 6th frond and spear on number 7 is about 2/3 out. Inhave four older fronds with some tip damage so I think I’m going to remove them. Here’s a few of my baby palms. The only palm that is taller than me are the Washingtonia that have grown like crazy. The one on the middle has put out 16+ fronds since the cold spell. There are two different crosses of Butia and Jubaea, a P sylvestris, Sabal uresana and a CIDP that was a strap about 1.5 years ago.

Some palms from a recent bike ride around San Antonio, and a few from Austin:

Comparing growth 9/21 to 10/24 to 6/259/2110/2410/246/25 9/2110/2410/246/259/2110/2410/246/25Copernicia alba 9/21Butia 9/2110/2410/2410/2410/246/25Copernicia alba 6/25 after protection from 17°F Ill get better shots early Fall once everything is recovered

I was at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, NC. They have a pair of Sabal Brazoriensis palms grown in deciduous shade and planted as 5 and 7 gallon plants in 2009 (https://jcra.ncsu.edu/horticulture/our-plants/results.php?search=brazoriensis). My understanding is that these came from seed collected in habitat. Here is the larger one but it didn't have any inflorescence this year. Here is a smaller one with inflorescence. It has some seedlings/smaller plants growing around it. I counted 4 orders of branching in the inflorescence and it was as tall as the tallest frond. I would surmise that if the petioles weren't stretched due to the shade, it may extend slightly past the fronds, but note the compactness (very short internodes). Sabal Minor inflorescence often isn't nearly as compact.

These “Potato Chip” Palms seem to have been enjoying life in the front garden for a number of years. The stems “crawl” horizontally and root in wherever they make soil contact. Anyone else growing these, please post photos!

Last but certainly not least, Metroxylon warburgii. Phil has a number of these growing on the side of his dam.

Wonderful example of Tahina spectabilis.

Yes neither of those look like minor for sure. Note the very noticeable cross on the trunk boots in first pic. Also the noticeable costapalmate at that size. For branching you don't count the main stem. But yes the inflorescence is not like minor. Below is a pic of my brazoriensis bloom and a couple charts I made that are on my most recent video. Note the inflorescence on these palms should be smaller in diameter than minor and not nearly as many in number as minor which shoots up 3-4 to 7

I water my parajubaea torallyi microcarpa in summer period October- April 3 times a week for 1hr on dripper system and it loves it.

Last year I collected seeds of a mature Dypsis decipiens that I planted in my parents garden many years ago. The seeds were cleaned and I put them in the refrigerator for a few months, waiting for warmer weather. In december my son Leonard ( who studies agronomics) planted them out in big pots. Maybe 1/4 of them germinated and today he and his sister Lydia transplanted 51 seedlings in individual pots. The first brazilian "manambe palms".

To me, an all-green garden would be sort of sad unless there’s splashes of floral color too. This Iresine outside my living room window, for instance, gives year round color.

Hooray, my bizzie is putting out normal leaves again! The jatropha is also back as expected. Added a Cancun Pink plumeria too

I couldn’t help myself in buying an original plate from 1896. It just goes to show that palms have been of intrest for a long time, and to stop by lord Howe island and collect seeds way back then they certainly had some great minds to think about the beauty of palms. Botany has always had its place in history and will continue to do so.

Areca vestiaria “Orange” do so well in SE Queensland.

Monster of a Corypha utan (Philippine variant).

Beautiful Marojejya darianii. Really impressive how much sun these can take.

Phil clearly knew what he was doing when planting Archontophoenix pupurea with “Blonde” Archontophoenix alexandrae. Pretty sweet contrast.

If my Chrysalidocarpus prestonianus hybrids turn out half a nice as Philip’s, I’ll be chuffed. This looks to have some C. pembanus in the mix I think.

these need ALOT of water. 2hrs trickle a day every day for a month then every other day as long as its warm out(>80 high). Im sure some Socal experienced board members will give you even better locally tailored advice. These are water hogs, I hope your soil doesnt drain too fast.

Here are some photos from my yard and a few from down near King William in San Antonio. The Bizzie is making a strong come back. Makes me want to try one! I see all these nice pics of palms being planted like those newly planted large Queen palms in Manvel and my mind is flashing to next winter when we are all posting photos of snow and ice and temps in the teens in places from Austin to Houston to San Antonio.. I think I’ve got some form of palm PTSD from the consistent winter lows we have been experiencing lately! 😂 Anyhow without further ado…. oh and @Ben G., those P. sylvestris were planted post 2021. This past year is the first winter that didn’t fry all their fronds. A few of them did not make it from the cold they’d been through.

To be limited to 3 species would be a tragedy for a dream garden. 1) a stand of copernicia fallaensis 2) satakentia luikensis 3) pinanga speciosa 4) copernicia hospita ( I cheated and added a 4th)

All I want to see is the future generations enjoy them. Hopefully they will become a part of the garden and be well looked after. Coffs botanical gardens has a lot of room for a lot of palms. It just needs to be set out in a way that will bring the eye candy to the viewer in the way of palms. Richard

The soil is a mix. One one end it's solid limestone rock. Alot of it was exposed at the surface. I removed tons of rocks that were the size of my torso. I used a bunch of them to enclose some raised beds. As you move towars the other end there was an area where the builder had excavated some rock to build a large retaining wall around the house. They then filled it with some sandy loam. That area was pretty deep and the soil is both hydrophobic when dry, but then drains really fast. Then there was an area next to it that was more like clay. I think some of the soils are mixed uo in that area because of work done long ago with the next door neighbors excavation of their pool and septic tank ... that was done when my plot was undeveloped ... I think the dirt was dumped on my plot, then when my house was build it got mixed up, etc I didn't prep much. I did dig out the stumps and roots of all the trees and brush and pulled out a lot of big rocks. The holes left behind were many and big. They got filled in with a mix of soils as I planted individual plants. If it was an agave, yucca, nolina, dioon, or Brahea then I left it alone as they can handle limestone. The Sabals had more organics mixed in with decomposed granite to keep drainage good. -Matt

I could easily do a top 25 list here. Maybe even top 50. 😬

Beautiful work. Iam sure your children will love and enjoy this moment and remember that special day in potting them up, and hopefully they get to plant them out and watch them grow with memories of family.

Sabal mexicana over the years in June. Last is 2025.

Here's a few 3s that are ready for 5s, and the ones are in the back.

Well I don't post much palm pics here (yet), but that's mostly because I only really got started on my palm planting in earnest a few years ago and until now never really felt like I had much pics of palmy landscape worth posting. Some of my palms are planted among grass and overgrown brush that desperatelt needs to be cleaned out. Anyways last summer I decided to take out 3 large (40 foot) Chinaberry trees that were planted in a row 20+ years ago. Palmageddon kilked them back nearly to the ground, but they then resprouted on the lower 15 feet or so of trunk. Those sprouts were epicormic and thus very weak jointed to the trunk. Once the branches would get to about 15 feet long they would tear away from the trunk and peel back 5 to 10 feet of the trunk. So last summer I decided to rip the trees down along with all of the brushy undergrowth. Here's some pics of that in progress. This past March I replanted that area, and beyond (not pictured) with palms, cycads, yuccas, agave, etc. Then since the area was now exposed to copious amounts of sun, the weeds exploded from dormant seeds. In the last few weeks I've been focused on pulling the weeds and mulching it in. Mostly it's a mix of pine bark mulch and rocks of various sizes, texture and color. The last pictute was taken 20 minutes ago. It only shows about one third if the entire area I have been working. You can see that even in that area I have not yet completed the mulching, etc. ... it's a work in progress for the rest of this summer/fall. I will add more pics as progress continues. -Matt

Yes

Nice! I love the species and have lots of them. Here’s one I planted a bit over twenty years ago.

Hi I found this picture of one of my Brahea armata palms taken in 2021. I took new pictures this morning to compare. It has grown rather quickly in 4 years.

Sept 2022 and february 2023 ( fruiting)

This was the mother palm on January 30 2014. ( and Leonard)

Drop dead gorgeous Bentinckia condapanna.

Cyphophoenix elegans with a straighter leaf, as opposed to the more curved form. Interestingly, the former seems to grow a lot faster than the latter. Some suggest it could be a hybrid.

the part of the forest is on the edge of the nature reserve, which is about 200m away. yes, I think someone just planted it there. but the fact is that even in the nearby nature reserve, plants like wildflowers are simply cut off and no one takes action because there is no one from nature conservation, just prohibition signs. Sabine had already discovered a woman who came towards her with wild flowers at the beginning of June. unfortunately she didn't catch her in the act. sometimes people here just take everything that doesn't belong to them. we had several fruit trees like nectarines and peach trees at the old site and they belonged to the landlord and we were caretakers. however, there were always people who even climbed over the fence, despite prohibition signs, and helped themselves when we weren't there ...

Gulf water temp is 86F by me. Maybe a bit warmer in the shallow estuaries by my house.

You can’t put a price on love! But you can stop giving him those salty treats to stop the crystals building up the poor fella having a blocked pee pee! I bet sancho puts one over them cats?

Not at this time, but I might start selling some soon. I have some one gallons that are ready for three gallons. And some smaller ones ready for one gallons. I'll get some pictures later.

I think this link proves your suggestion: https://www.smgrowers.com/info/Yuccaelephantipes.asp Hi 103°, Lo 73°