Leaderboard

Still have no idea the species but it is very happy and beginning to get some frosty hue to the underside. Like many down here in SoCal, this was sold to me as Martii. No clue if it is or not. -dale

Pritchardua ? And lipstick

This years update

Caryota sp.

This sunrise , as I gaze through the fronds of our Howea , caught my attention! We are expecting a rain storm tomorrow and we are at the leading edge of the storm , creating a fire in the sky. Harry

Met a buddy of mine up there right after a big rain-perfect timing, although we are a bit early for aloe season. Acacia podalyrifolia and Ceiba insignis

A nice little batch of 50 macrocarpa should see to it that the garden has a bit of colour. These one will go into the new garden in the next few years.

It was about 30 years ago so I can’t remember . If you talk to a good nursery that knows palms , they can recommend the right choice . That’s what I did , went to a nursery that happened to have a palm specialist . I’m thinking it was granular that I mixed in around the base of the palm , try not to let it gathered against the trunk . Harry

Oh yeah, some of them are really rapid growers. And some just refuse to die. I had an interesting black leaf one with red stems. I thought it died 3 or 4 years ago from frost, and then one randomly popped up over the summer...

I'm seeing several sellers of plants in different sizes on Etsy, also eBay. I noticed a listing, of all places, on Wayfair...you never know when you're going to find plants in odd places these days. Search for Paurotis or Everglades Palm, as the actual genus name is very difficult for most people to spell, so don't expect it to return the most listings. Somebody on Etsy (CypressGardensNur) has four one-gallon plants left at the moment for $45.00 each with free shipping, calling them "Silver Saw Palm" and misspelled "Acoelorraphe"...in short, they're around, you just have to do some searching.

Sorry John I thought you meant Chambeyronia. I got a hundred seeds of joeys in customs now. There easy and they are a lot more expensive over there here a seedling goes for $50 to $60 bucks. But yes one would grow for you indoors.

The king of trachycarpus @Jonathan Haycock Was surprised at my ones in the shade. I got him thinking I think about shade grown ones!

Pinocchio John they call him!

@JohnAndSancho Whatever they are, even if regular palmetto, they're very nice. I hope to see mine trunked like that some day. I love them!

@Maddox Gardening-youtube Keep a close eye on it. Those temperatures aren't usually fatal, but they can sometimes weaken the palm to the point where it will develop a crown infection. This happens a lot if the cold is early in the season with more cold spells ahead and there is rain right before a few of them. That said, the old saying in American football is "Don't spike the ball on the 1-yard line." In this case, we're at the 1-yard line on the other side of the field.

This isn't really beautiful or anything but seeing how much I can squeeze in these storage bins is nice. Top water the bananas and let everything else bottom water and soak up the fertilizer runoff.

Pollen collection this morning

lovely display and collection! 5 years ago on facebook i publicly posted around 70 pics i've taken of staghorns here in socal. and here's a public fb post about my friend and i growing platycerium ridleyi from spore. perhaps tracy is referring to the spectacular platycerium superbum specimen he shared a pic of in this palmtalk thread... recently in a discussion with google search ai (sounds so sci-fi) i shared this... "conveniently, one of my google photos contained this description... Staghorn Platycerium Elemeria 2011 Fern and Exotic Plant Show at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Label says... "Platycerium Elemaria is a hybrid volunteer that a botanist found growing in Ernie Sanchez's former plant nursery in Pasadena. It is believed the parents are Platycerium elephantotis and stemaria. Most hybrids bear sterile spores as does this plant. Hybrids are apt to have somewhat irregular fronds or fronds intermediate to the two parents. Some hybrids are hard to establish as hybrids by the looks and various chemical test may need to be done." In a 2018 email that Fernando Orellana sent to me he said, "When Barbara Joe [Hoshizaki] discovered this plant at the nursery of Mr. Sanchez she thought the parents were P. elephantotis and P. stemaria and her conclusion about these two parents was adopted by the Platycerium world, because it looks like elephantotis but the fertile fronds are not straight at the end, rather uneven like the stemaria. Our friend Dan Yansura conducted a genetic test about two years ago and discovered that the genetic markers of one of the parents was consistent with P. andinum, I don’t think this has been published yet but he mentioned it to me and also to some of the members of the fern group at the gathering in my house."" barbara joe was such an incredible plant person. she was extremely generous with her knowledge and plants. at each fern show at the los angeles arboretum she would walk around the exhibit and share information about the entries. here's a pic i took of her admiring a platycerium elemaria wonderfully grown by the very talented patricia marlatt... the problem with barbara joe's theory of elemaria's parentage (which is only obvious now with perfect hindsight) is that neither elephantotis nor stemaria grow that well outdoors here in socal, unlike elemaria. so yansura's paternity test pointing to one of the parents being andinum makes sense, since it can grow relatively well here outside. it's the same with platycerium horn's surprise, which can grow outside here. one of its parents, alcicorne, can grow outside here, unlike its other parent... madagascariense. one of the most overlooked aspects of staghorns, at least from my very biased perspective, is that so many other plants are really happy to grow in/on them. i can never figure out the best preposition. recently on a youtube video by a professional rose grower discussing the topic of the preponderance and proliferation of fake propagation videos, i commented a couple paragraphs, the 2nd of which contains a fun example of a staghorn making a perfect substrate for propagating another plant. "the basic problem is using cheap signals (views/votes) to rank content. so the simple solution is to replace cheap signals with costly signals, such as donations. for example, on your homepage you share some of your best and most useful content. but imagine if “best” and “most useful” was defined by donations. which would be ranked more highly on your homepage, your propagation videos or your videos debunking fake propagation? currently we can see the relative popularity of these videos, but we can’t see the relative demand for them. and even in cases when you can see the demand for something, like your roses, you’re not seeing the full demand. this means that the chances are slim that your bestselling roses would also be the most highly donated for on your homepage. once the “treasure map” on your homepage became obviously useful, everyone would clearly see and understand the terribly tragic problem with using cheap signals to rank things. since i’m here, i might as well share my fav rose propagation story. my friend jerry hung a staghorn fern above his rose bush. a stem from the rose was offended by being shaded by the fern so it grew right next to it and then above it. over time the fern fell in love with the rose stem, and embraced it (grew around it), and the stem reciprocated by rooting into the fern. so basically this romantic entanglement was a natural air-layer. when my friend had to move the staghorn, he cut the rose stem below the fern, and now he has a rose bush growing and blooming from his hanging staghorn fern. i’m guessing you didn’t know that roses and all sorts of plants love growing in staghorns ferns. you’d never overlook another relevant gold nugget again if your donors could rank content on your homepage." the point of plant friends is to improve our plant priorities. so many of my fav plants i learned about thanks to touring a new plant friend's garden. and when new plant friends have toured my garden, i take note when they get excited about a plant group that they'd previously overlooked. sadly it's just not logistically possible for every member of palmtalk to visit each other's gardens. pictures certainly help but, how many pics are on palmtalk? more and more. treasure keeps getting buried deeper and deeper. my point is, i still like the idea of a fundraiser for palmtalk where we donate to rank everyone's pics of their fav plants. i need a good excuse to dig up my pics of loran whitelock's plants and figure out which ones to enter into the contest. naturally i took a lot of pics of his staghorns, which i shared in my fb post from 5 years ago, which was way too hard to find. and one or more members of palmtalk need a good excuse to dig up and share pics from mardi darian's garden. did he grow any staghorns? i don't know. sadly i totally blew my one chance to visit it while he was still alive. now that he's gone my plant priorities can no longer improve his plant priorities, but his plant priorities can still improve my own.

It could be that mine suffered some transport shock. The plants are slow, but I do notice that they are maturing faster than Sabal minor. I am inclined to believe that these are a form of Sabal brazoriensisor or independently occurring hybrid, but I am very open mended to alternatives.

I agree. Serenoa hate pots and want to be in the ground. But, hey, they are worth trying if you don't break the bank. Just report back to us so we all learn something

+2 on Sabal palmetto

I'm no expert either. Literally saw a $25 pot with a mom and 6 pups and thought "I'll bet I could sell the pups for what I pay for the whole pot in a few months," I just didn't know that "a few months" would turn into "2 weeks." I guess we can confirm conditions in my grow room are awesome for tropicals. It's literally like Florida in there.

Picture of one of my Sabal “Praha” ina pot and the other was planted this summer. They grew very slowly for me in Oregon but most Sabals do. Since I moved to Texas they have grown at a normal pace so have quickly gained mass. They don’t look exactly like the Sabal mexicana that I am growing out. Unfortunately I don’t have any similar size palmettos to compare to.

@John2468 yeah that definitely looks like the Alocasia "California" one and not the invasive Xanthosoma or Colocasia. The easiest way to tell is how the leaves are held. Yours are upright with the tips pointing upwards. The Xanthosoma and Colocasia Esculenta grow with tips pointing down. I *think* that's an Alocasia = up and Colocasia = down quick ID method. But I don't grow too many elephant ears these days...too much frost for most of them to be happy all year.

Nice one they are quite tough. They are super cute and they are quite rare. So you have one beautiful little palm. Richard

Thank you for the clarity @peachy . Another word for my vocabulary🙂. If I hang around here long enough , someone might get the impression I’m smart or something. Harry

P. beccariana is definitely one of my favorites, here’s one i donated to the Kopsick Palm arboretum in St. Pete in 2019

A little insect on the Yapa frond got my attention

A nice little tray of some Johannesteijsmannia magnifica anyone!

Here are a couple of photos of the P. martii. The petioles are unbelievably long even being in full sun. The abaxial side of the leaves are solid white, almost looks like heavy frost. I had Jonathan stand next to it for scale when he and his wife came for a visit. It’s unlike any Pritchardia I’ve ever seen. I know the provenance of this palm and it’s the real deal. Tim

Looking great Bret. The P. martii still ticks all the boxes for me, although the other Pritchardia’s in the garden can hold their own. Here are a few recent photos. A juvenile P. beccariana.

This one , lower right hand corner . Harry

Macarturii and Ponapea as well.

Obi island getting sexy, Pinanga looking bright, and a 4 year C pembana as I recall…

Probably the genus I obsess over more than most. Got a nice husky P. forbesiana from floribunda several years ago. Followed by a becarriana I previously posted, but just is turning into a monster.

I have two that are at flowering size. My Weddellianum sets seed already at the same size. In the pic, it’s the one in the middle, plants to left and right are my Insigne. Insigne Is a much better Palm in IMHO. Fatter leaflets, super silver underneath and the petioles are loaded with dense dark brown hairs. Bigger plant in general from wispy, skinnier Weddellianum. My Insigne are around 12 years old.

Yuccas are another one of my favorite landscaping go to here on the coast of Maine. They take the cold and moisture with ease.