Farthest north/most out of place you have seen a palm?

[jfrye01@live.com]

Just figured I'd ask a fun, interesting question...where is the furthest north/inland/out of place you have seen a palm tree? For me, it would be a toss-up between Victoria, BC, Canada, or Gainesville, TX...The palms in Victoria didn't seem so much out of place as they are in a coastal location, but the large Washys in Gainesville (just miles south of the Oklahoma border) were VERY strange!! That and the Sabals in front of a fast food Mexican restaurant in Sherman, TX...How about you all?

[jfrye01@live.com]

Also...forgot the Trachy in Tulsa, OK...it caught me off guard first time I saw it!

[JEFF IN MODESTO]

Hmmm, we have lotz of palms here in modesto, ca at 37* north.

We are farther north than both Gainesville ,Tx and Tulsa, ok.

[jfrye01@live.com]

Cool!! Wow...that's pretty far inland too! Mostly Washies I'd imagine?

[Sabal Steve]

The guy in IOWA!

[JEFF IN MODESTO]

Yea we are about 50-60 mi inland.

Lotz of washies, queens , CID , etc.

We are zone 9b so we could grow more varieties than we do .

[Xerarch]

Not the furthest north but I've seen good sized trachy's in Salt Lake City, UT unprotected. Most people would not expect that. Even further north than that in Bountiful, UT. There is a guy with Syagrus, Washingtonia, Chamaerops in his front yard, he protects the heck out of them of coarse. Check out the link, it's an older story now, wonder if he's still up to it.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=325048

[Brad Mondel]

In New Jersy there's trachycarpus.

[_Keith]

Alaska. On PT. It is no longer there, but it was for a while.

http://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/14689-death-of-the-northern-most-alaskan-palm/

[Zeeth]

When I was in Germany I know there were Trachycarpus there, but I wasn't into palms yet so I didn't really notice them at all.

[bgl]

Several years ago there was a group of three Trachycarpus, about 6-7 ft tall, in a traffic circle at the entrance to the small village of Höllviksnäs, very close to the extreme southwestern tip of Sweden. This is close to latidude 56N. They were there for several years and totally unprotected during the winter. They have since disappeared. I don't believe they died but were probably removed by the county because they just didn't look very good.

[Dr. George]

I don't know that its the farthest north, but I was surprised to see a large number of these in Victoria and Vancouver BC - gmp

[jfrye01@live.com]

I was surprised to see them in Victoria as well!! I had to do a double take! This was about 10 years ago, I was about 9 years old, so I didn't know much about palms, but I was very surprised!

[Sandy Loam]

Victoria is a slightly warmer city than Vancouver, but they both never see temperatures that are terribly cold. Their climates are similar to misty/overcast/rainy Portland and Seattle (just 2.5 hour drive to the south), so they may squeak into the zone 9a/8b fringe, even though they don't have the significant daytime winter warmups/hot sun of places in 9a/8b in northern Florida, southeastern Georgia, southern Alabama, southern Mississippi, southern Louisiana, northeastern Texas and so on.

A wall of rocky mountains pinning the "greenhouse effect" against the Pacific Ocean creates an incredibly temperate effect on the climates of Vancouver and Victoria. However, they do receive a momentary snowfall there about once every 5 years.

[jfrye01@live.com]

I also forgot Branson, MO...couple of Trachys in front of a theater, don't remember which

[stevethegator]

Not the furthest north but I've seen good sized trachy's in Salt Lake City, UT unprotected. Most people would not expect that. Even further north than that in Bountiful, UT. There is a guy with Syagrus, Washingtonia, Chamaerops in his front yard, he protects the heck out of them of coarse. Check out the link, it's an older story now, wonder if he's still up to it.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=325048

Wow, I was born in SLC and have a lot of family there, this is just crazy! It can get some lake effect warmth that puts it in zone 7 for years, but when the arctic fronts come in that area can drop well below 0F.

Bountiful is a wealthy suburb of SLC, about halfway up the "hills" (mountains to the rest of us) to the north of the city, so at least this guy's yard was likely above the horrible inversion layer.

My grandma who's lived there most of her life would DIE if she saw this, she's an avid gardener and "doesn't understand why people would try to grow palms in Salt Lake." I took her to Fairchild when she visited a year or two ago and she got bored because "it was all palms"

[stevethegator]

I've never actually seen them in person but I've seen pictures of Trachies on Long Island, NY. My girlfriend is from there and always talks about how miserable the winters were so any palms sound out of place to me there. But hey, if I had to live up there Id give it a go!

I also had a friend from Boston who told me the rich people along the Mass. coast have palms in their yards, not sure if they're trachies, needles, or just random species that are treated as annuals. I can't picture any palm surviving a New England winter!

[Xerarch]

Not the furthest north but I've seen good sized trachy's in Salt Lake City, UT unprotected. Most people would not expect that. Even further north than that in Bountiful, UT. There is a guy with Syagrus, Washingtonia, Chamaerops in his front yard, he protects the heck out of them of coarse. Check out the link, it's an older story now, wonder if he's still up to it.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=325048

Wow, I was born in SLC and have a lot of family there, this is just crazy! It can get some lake effect warmth that puts it in zone 7 for years, but when the arctic fronts come in that area can drop well below 0F.

Bountiful is a wealthy suburb of SLC, about halfway up the "hills" (mountains to the rest of us) to the north of the city, so at least this guy's yard was likely above the horrible inversion layer.

My grandma who's lived there most of her life would DIE if she saw this, she's an avid gardener and "doesn't understand why people would try to grow palms in Salt Lake." I took her to Fairchild when she visited a year or two ago and she got bored because "it was all palms"

If you look at the newest USDA zone map, there are areas around SLC that are as warm as 7b, especially areas that are a little elevated, as you would imagine. I'm aware of how cold the records are but I never experienced anything that cold growing up there. Almost every winter gets down to the low single digits or around zero at the airport (the lowest ground around). The inversion is the real killer there, as you have alluded to, bad air quality aside, temps stay in the single digits and teens for days and days at at time. I guess Trachy's can survive it though, as long as the absolute lows aren't too bad. The guy's house where I saw the Trachy's (and others, needle palm, Sabal minor) was on the east side, Sugerhouse area if I remember, so he was elevated a little.

[stevethegator]

That's right near where we used to live. I was too young to remember the cold but I do remember the feet upon feet of snow!

Surprising that any palm can survive that but as we all know they're amazing plants