Tall Coconuts, Fort Lauderdale Airport Green Space

[buzzmonkey]

The next installment in the palms of Fort Lauderdale parks, this dense patch of tall variety coconut palms that survived the recent airport expansion project are worthy of posting. The effect of a coconut forest is not one you see a lot of around here, even though coconuts are easily one of the most common palms.

[Dave-Vero]

Nice scenes. We have nothing similar up here, thanks to freezes.

I spotted this little shot in a local news source, and checked it against Google Street View. I'm reasonably sure I had the correct corner, but their 2011 Street View image was almost unrecognizable. Several coconuts with trunks were present, but they looked newly planted or ravaged by the two bad winters in a row. What a difference four years can make!

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

Looks like paradise to me, many beautiful tall coconut palms!

[Jeff Searle]

As a kid growing up in Hallandale, I remember seeing tall coconuts like these everywhere. Then came LY.....

[Coconutman]

Simply stunning! I love the tall cocos.

[IHB1979]

Fantastic photo, love the grove planting.

[buzzmonkey]

It is very sad that groves of these spectacualr palms, at least in this area, are almost a thing of the past.

[Cluster]

I am jealous, that looks amazing, awesome palms.

[displaced_floridian]

That's a beautiful 'coconut grove'. Looks like they've been there a while. How long do you think, to get that tall?

[Dave-Vero]

Here in Vero Beach, where coconuts suffer winter leaf damage fairly often and sometimes die in the cold, it looks as though you can grow trunks at least a third of the height of the grove in ten years, given ideal conditions. So figure the end of the lethal yellowing plague and assume that young trees (probably of varieties that no one expected to become tall), did.

[empireo22]

squidlips in Melbourne by eau gallie have some tall coconuts right now holding full crowns. they look just as healthy as these which is hard to find up here especially coming out of winter. they have about 5 to 10 ft less of trunk though. I need to get a picture.

[Dave-Vero]

I should check the one at Riverside, south of the Beachland bridge in Vero.

[IHB1979]

A friend of mine in Satellite Beach, fl planted some strap leaf coconuts in his yard shortly after the 89 freeze and by 2009-10 they had almost 30' of trunk. Don't know if that helps. I imagine those coconuts in Ft Lauderdale grew a little faster being further south. I took a photo of these near my house today. It's cool but not as awesome as the grove photos.

[Sandy Loam]

As a kid growing up in Hallandale, I remember seeing tall coconuts like these everywhere. Then came LY.....

Does anyone know why the "Lethal Yellowing Disease" pest attacked the "tall" specie coconut trees in Florida, but left all the other coconut trees unharmed?

I am sure that this has been discussed at length on PalmTalk years ago. Pardon my ignorance.

By the way, I do see random "Jamaican tall" coconut trees around South Florida and the Keys here and there. Obviously, they are vastly outnumbered by the other coconut trees, but they still do appear to exist.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

P. C.

My wife and I stayed at a motel right on the water in Islamorada in December 2010 and the motel had probably about a 15 or more mature Jamaican Talls 70 + ft. tall, and what I think was some private condos next door, had about two dozen mature Jamaicans just in the backyard alone, with some even taller than at our motel. When we were looking for some good viable nuts to bring back, we saw numerous older mature Jamaicans without tetracycline injectors in their trunks that must have survived the Lethal Yellowing outbreak. There was even some vacant lots in that part of the Keys that had mature coconut palms growing on them that looked pretty good. Just as some people have natural immunity to epidemic outbreaks, so do some coconut palms of otherwise susceptible varieties. Getting viable nuts from these Lethal Yellowing survivors should produce a naturally resistant strain of tall offspring.

John

[Zeeth]

Very nice!