Chamaedorea alternans

[JeffreyApolloBeach]

I saw a beautiful specimen of this palm on a garden tour this past weekend, and fell in love with it. What a beautiful palm! The yellow stripe along the petiole, the green ringed trunk, the orange/yellow flower, and aerial roots!! Great looking palm.

I want to get one, but need to know how much sun can it tolerate. Half day? 2 hours? Also, can it be grown in a pot outside under shade? How about indoors (with A/C)?

I would love to see pictures of yours.

Here are 2 pictures of the palm I saw this weekend.

[JeffreyApolloBeach]

Pic of the flower

[joe_OC]

Found a lot of info just by "googling" palm...

Some sites say that it is synonym to Tepelijote. PACSOA says they are different palms because of "Monocot list"...

[MattyB]

I have an 8 foot tall one that's a perfect house plant. I do not use my AC regularly though, so I don't know about that. But we do have dry air here in SoCal and it looks perfect. It's a tough plant but I don't think it can handle any more than some early morning or late late afternoon sun when the angle is very low. I took mine out recently, and cut off the bottom 25% of the rootball with a knife and repotted it. It lost one leaf and continued to grow healthily. I love this palm. It is basically a C. tepijilote but I think the leaves are wider. Not quite as wide as C. nationsiana or C. arenbergiana though.

[sashaeffer]

I happen to have both the Alternans and Tepijilote as well as indoor palms here in Nebraska. Both came from Phil at Jungle Music.

Alterans is room with bright light, but no direct sun palm is a moderate, but steady grower.(5 gallon) I can say it's pushed all new fronds from when I got it but can't say it's grown in over all height.

Tepijilote on the other hand came in a 2? gallon container, in a room with a lot less light and in a corner and it's simply a rocket ship. While it's in a room with a 11ft ceiling, my hope is that it will top out around 8/9 foot so it can stay in there. Beautiful palm and fastest palm that I have in collection.

[Pal Meir]

Photos?

[sashaeffer]

Alternans

 

 

[sashaeffer]

Tepejilote

 

 

[Pal Meir]

The leaves of your Ch. tepejilote don’t look very healthy, too yellow, dried tips: Have you considered changing your soil mix? I guess the soil needs a better drainage and should be more alkaline as it’s growing (often) on limestone slopes.

[sashaeffer]

Unfortunately the palm came to me that way from Jungle Music. Might have been getting too much sun where it was at in the nursery. The Alternans was the same way but as each new frond of that one emerged the bad looking one dried up and I cut off. Now it has 3 "new" fronds since being at my house and pushing a spear for a 4th.

The Tepejilote has opened one new frond that looks great, and spear in pic will be opening probably within a month. Depending on which way the frond points to, I may or may not cut off one of the sad looking fronds.

 

One thing I've noticed about Chamaedoreas in general, is that they seem to not like a change in environment and will loose leaves/fronds while activity growing a new spear and fronds.

I have a tall C. Warscewicsii as well from Jungle Music that had discolored leaves, and others that dried up quickly after I got it shipped to me. I would have been concerned but figured it was just doing what other Chamaedoreas have done..and maybe the species doesn't travel well? I'm not sure. In any case it too is a quick growing species of Chamaedorea and has pushed one new spear that opened into new frond and has since pushed another that will open soon, then giving the palm a much nicer looking "top" than it does now.  

[sashaeffer]

Wascewicsii. Pretty quick grower with a new spear about to open as well. It's been rock solid in the house.

[sashaeffer]

From further away.