A friend from the board came to Greenwood today to check out locally planted palms and the stands of native Sabal minors. After I showed him some of the palms around town, I took him to see some wild Sabal minors I discovered a few years ago. I am happy that this palm is native to my county. It is truly a tough palm that is very underused. I will post a few pictures. If there is interest, I will post more.

Thank you for looking.

Great pictures, Scot! Thanks for posting them. I, for one, would love to see more habitat pics from your state. Have you ever seen Rhapidophyllum in habitat in S.C.? I know it's pretty rare there.

And what a great time it was... Scot was an excellent host and after a bit of doubt, we finally found the thickets of sabal minors. It got to be such an overload, instead of taking pictures, I resorted to taking videos instead. But here are a few that I took that I really liked:

Attempting to be "artistic" with my photography and the S. Minors

I didn't realize this till after sifting through the pictures, but the frond behind me, a few feet off the ground, is even larger than the one I have my hand in front of!

Such a great time and all of these sabal minors were just a hundred feet off from the road. No telling how many hundreds if not thousands were miles deep in those woods. What a great experience, and my first experience, to getting up close and personal with native growing sabals in the piedmont of South Carolina.

Frank, the owner of Penny's Palms told me and Scot that he knew a palm guy that claimed there was a large R. Hystrix in South Carolina. Can't remember where or if he specified... But, as Mr. Penny told us, the guy that knew the whereabouts of this palm was tight lipped about its location. He must have thought he was planning on digging it up, which Mr. Penny wouldn't have done. But that's all I know as far as needle palms in South Carolina go.

Edited June 13, 201511 yr by smithgn

Wow! I didn't know they were that far inland, I'm surprised actually. I can't wait to move back to SC and hopefully go Sabal Minor hunting down that way.

I remember reading a thread about a nice population of needles in SC somewhere but that was a few years ago.

Well according to records, Rhapidophyllum exists native there, but I have yet to see one habitat picture. Same goes for Mississippi.

Where at in Greenwood was this?

I think Rhapidophyllum is only native to Beaufort and Jasper counties. They're not common and I have not yet seen any in the wild here. 

Great photos, thanks for sharing!

Seeing understory of S.minor as far as you can see is such a cool thing. If you are ever traveling down I49 in Louisiana you will past a lot of swampland, flood plains with 1000's upon 1000's of native S. Minor.  

Just got back from a weekend at Kiawah Island in Charleston Co. SC.  I really thought i was looking at needle palms.  Can anyone give ID pointers for distinguishing between native scrub type palms by using fronds only?  There were some that were definitely needles, but not positive if they were native to the island

Almost certain that there are native Serenoa repens on Kiawah.  But the range maps don't show that either.  Range maps for these smaller trunkless palms are very incomplete