I Planted Two More Coconut Palms Today.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

With our record breaking warmth we are having this January (got up to 88F at the airport, breaking the old record of 85F back in 2002), and getting up to 76.2F at my place today, I decided to plant two more of my coconut palms.  These went in the backyard, and they are my Mexican Tall (first photo) and one of my Maymex hybrids (second photo).  They are both from coconuts my Palm Society friend and I collected off the beach at Padre Island last May.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1703871853188373&set=oa.1659028487690981&type=3&relevant_count=1

[Coconutman]

[NorCalKing]

They look great. I think we are in the home stretch for this winter, so I think you're safe!

[RedRabbit]

Good deal, I'm still going to wait a little longer before planting but this year has been so mild I get the feeling you'll be fine. On another note, there are coconuts just washing up on the beach on Padre Island?

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

4 minutes ago, NorCalKing said:

They look great. I think we are in the home stretch for this winter, so I think you're safe!

Thanks.  I hope so.  Spring usually sets in in this area by early to mid February.  The lowest they are predicting over the next week is in the low 40's, and that's at the airport, whereas here, I shouldn't get below about 45F for a night or two.  Last nights low at my place was 60.6F, and tonight I am at 62.4F right now, so it might get a little cooler tonight, probably down to about 57F for me, then mid to upper 70'sF again tomorrow, and 70's on Tuesday before the front comes through.

[Silas_Sancona]

Nice way to end a weekend.. Curious how often viable Mex. talls wash up on the island. With all the talk of potential, extra cold tolerance, it would be interesting to get more of these spread around. One id try in Phoenix for sure.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

5 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Good deal, I'm still going to wait a little longer before planting but this year has been so mild I get the feeling you'll be fine. On another note, there are coconuts just washing up on the beach on Padre Island?

Yeah, I hope I haven't jumped the gun, but it has been such a mild winter here that I couldn't wait any longer.  Sometimes I get impatient, but I wanted to give them a big jump on growth for the whole year before next winter.  And yes, we get thousands of coconuts washing up on our Texas beaches from the Rio Grand Delta at Boca Chica at least all the way up to Galveston, and maybe even up to Bolivar Peninsula every year from about March till October or early November, when the currents switch and come from the Louisiana coastline southward.  Our nuts come from the Gulf Coast of Mexico from north of Tampico to Veracruz and the Yucatan, and probably a few from western Cuba too when the currents and wind are just right.

[RedRabbit]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Coconut Palm said:

Yeah, I hope I haven't jumped the gun, but it has been such a mild winter here that I couldn't wait any longer.  Sometimes I get impatient, but I wanted to give them a big jump on growth for the whole year before next winter.  And yes, we get thousands of coconuts washing up on our Texas beaches from the Rio Grand Delta at Boca Chica at least all the way up to Galveston, and maybe even up to Bolivar Peninsula every year from about March till October or early November, when the currents switch and come from the Louisiana coastline southward.  Our nuts come from the Gulf Coast of Mexico from north of Tampico to Veracruz and the Yucatan, and probably a few from western Cuba too when the currents and wind are just right.

Very interesting. I'm a tad jealous, the currents on the west coast of Florida don't carry anything north. 

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

13 minutes ago, Silas_Sancona said:

Nice way to end a weekend.. Curious how often viable Mex. talls wash up on the island. With all the talk of potential, extra cold tolerance, it would be interesting to get more of these spread around. One id try in Phoenix for sure.

Yeah, I love planting them, and would like to become the Johnny Appleseed of Coconut Palms on the South Texas Coast.  The pure Mexican Talls are the least of the sprouts I get from beach coconuts, unfortunately.  The majority are Maymex hybrid crosses between the Mexican Tall and one of the Malayan Dwarf varieties, followed by pure Malayan Dwarfs, one of which even turned out to be a Yellow Malayan last year that I planted a couple of weeks ago and posted a photo of.  I love the Yellow and Golden Malayans because of their color, compact size crown compared to the talls, and the fact that they start producing when only 4 years old, but the Yellow variety is probably the least cold hardy of the 3 Malayan varieties.  Yeah, I really wish we could get a lot more pure Mexican Talls.  I wish we could bring them across the river from Matamoros as either sprouts or just the ripe viable seed nuts, but thanks to the U.S.D.A. and Customs, I don't think it's possible, but I recall someone saying on one of these threads the other day that it is possible to bring the unhusked nuts over and sprout them here without their husks.  That might be an option if we knew the parent trees were truly Mexican Talls.  There are some nice 50ft. tall Mexican Talls with mature nuts on them in Matamoros just across the river from Brownsville that Jonathon posted some Google photos of a while back.  Maybe the best bet would be to get some more established in Brownsville and convince their owners to adequately water them during the hot dry months, then we could have a ready and reliable source for seed nuts on this side of the border.  There are some really nice Mexican Talls in the Valley now, but unfortunately, most people growing coconut palms there don't adequately water them in the hot dry months to allow for decent nut production.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

10 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Very interesting. I'm a tad jealous, the currents on the west coast of Florida don't carry anything north. 

I have always found that puzzling since you guys do have some offshore coral reefs and coral covered rock banks off the west coast of Florida, which would seem to indicate that you get a certain degree of southerly currents.  Maybe they are just some sort of loop current off the main offshore current coming from the south and when it gets to your area, its already looping back to the south, thus any nuts that were in the original current from the south would either start drifting out of the current and head west to us or end up washing up occasionally on the Louisiana to Alabama beaches.  It would be interesting to know if they ever get any nuts washing up there, even though they wouldn't be able to grow the palms that outdoors that far north.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

15 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Very interesting. I'm a tad jealous, the currents on the west coast of Florida don't carry anything north. 

There must be some degree of near shore currents heading north in your area, because how else did the Red Mangrove originally spread all the way up to Cedar Key, and how else do they get reestablished to the north of Tampa after a very hard freeze?

[RedRabbit]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Coconut Palm said:

There must be some degree of near shore currents heading north in your area, because how else did the Red Mangrove originally spread all the way up to Cedar Key, and how else do they get reestablished to the north of Tampa after a very hard freeze?

Beats me. I know coconuts wash ashore up to Brevard County on the east coast of FL but I've yet to see that over here.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

22 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Beats me. I know coconuts wash ashore up to Brevard County on the east coast of FL but I've yet to see that over here.

I used to live in Coral Springs and explored the beaches all the time.  The only coconut I ever found near the water was a large one washed up on the shore of the canal on the back side of the park across the street from where we lived.  I never remember finding any along the beaches in the Keys either, and yet they are growing everywhere there, so I think they wash up in Florida, but are grabbed by either tourists who want a souvenir, or someone who wants to chop it open, like what happens to some of them that wash up over here (and they leave the chopped open coconut sitting on the beach, making me think it is viable from a distance and I run up to it, only to find the other half of the nut missing.  It really pisses me off!), or maybe they get grabbed by a grower like us who wants to grow them.  I think your problem is that there is just way too many people in Florida for a nut to last more than 10 minutes on the beach, whereas over here, we have many miles of undeveloped beach and much of it you need a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get access too.  In those areas, there are virtually no tourists and the other guys with the 4 wheel drives are just out there to go surf fishing in remote areas and couldn't care less about coconuts.  Then occasionally you get some redneck smart alleck that likes to make a game out of running over the coconuts in his big jacked up 4x4, thereby crushing big perfectly viable nuts, and that REALLY pisses me off!  Also, a lot of our nuts are camouflaged underneath and around tons of Sargassum that washes up here in the spring and summer, so a lot of nuts get overlooked except by experience coconut hunters like myself and my Palm Society buddy.

[Cluster]

Another very interesting post,I hope the new coconuts will be happy for many years to come. I am also considering the unhusked idea. 

[Zeeth]

18 hours ago, Mr. Coconut Palm said:

 I wish we could bring them across the river from Matamoros as either sprouts or just the ripe viable seed nuts, but thanks to the U.S.D.A. and Customs, I don't think it's possible, but I recall someone saying on one of these threads the other day that it is possible to bring the unhusked nuts over and sprout them here without their husks.  That might be an option if we knew the parent trees were truly Mexican Talls.  

Yeah, the USDA will allow any coconuts through as long as they have no husk, so your best bet is to select the coconuts that you would have otherwise taken, remove the husks by hand (a nice sharp and strong knife helps here) and declare them at the border. It'll be a hassle to remove all of the husks by hand, but it's better than nothing!

 

I'm attaching a link to the USDA rules for fruit importation, and uploading the specific page about coconuts.

 

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/seeds_not_for_planting.pdf

Coconut.pdf

[Silas_Sancona]

2 hours ago, Zeeth said:

Yeah, the USDA will allow any coconuts through as long as they have no husk, so your best bet is to select the coconuts that you would have otherwise taken, remove the husks by hand (a nice sharp and strong knife helps here) and declare them at the border. It'll be a hassle to remove all of the husks by hand, but it's better than nothing!

 

I'm attaching a link to the USDA rules for fruit importation, and uploading the specific page about coconuts.

 

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/seeds_not_for_planting.pdf

Coconut.pdf

Good info Keith!..  Had a couple ideas on how to get these from one side of the river to the other but i'm pretty sure they'd be more trouble than they're worth.. no matter how entertaining.

Jon, Interesting that the number of Mex Tall "floaters" washing up on South Padre is so low/ lower compared to other varieties you have noted..

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

3 hours ago, Cluster said:

Another very interesting post,I hope the new coconuts will be happy for many years to come. I am also considering the unhusked idea. 

Thanks, Pedro.  I hope I can grow them up to fruiting height with at least a few nuts on them someday, and hopefully at least a couple of those will be viable to plant and start new palms from.

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

3 hours ago, Zeeth said:

Yeah, the USDA will allow any coconuts through as long as they have no husk, so your best bet is to select the coconuts that you would have otherwise taken, remove the husks by hand (a nice sharp and strong knife helps here) and declare them at the border. It'll be a hassle to remove all of the husks by hand, but it's better than nothing!

 

I'm attaching a link to the USDA rules for fruit importation, and uploading the specific page about coconuts.

 

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/seeds_not_for_planting.pdf

Coconut.pdf

Thanks, Keith.  So as I understand it bringing over unhusked ripe and viable nuts is okay, if I could find a reliable source for pure Mexican Talls, preferably from Matamoros or a nearby location (so the would be from the northernmost part of their range and thus have a greater degree of cold hardiness)?  If you read through that last table on the coconuts, it says that green immature nuts have to have their husks removed, yet I have seen some in local Mexican markets that have the green, golden, and yellow husks on them, and some of them are pretty big.  I have tried browning these up and sprouting them, and have only gotten 2 to sprout in the last 29 years, one sprouted into a beautiful Green Malayan Dwarf that I planted at the chapel I attended in Lake Worth when I lived in Coral Springs (I took it with me when I moved from Texas to Florida in 2000).

John

[Mr. Coconut Palm]

58 minutes ago, Silas_Sancona said:

Good info Keith!..  Had a couple ideas on how to get these from one side of the river to the other but i'm pretty sure they'd be more trouble than they're worth.. no matter how entertaining.

Jon, Interesting that the number of Mex Tall "floaters" washing up on South Padre is so low/ lower compared to other varieties you have noted..

Nathan,

I think the reason is that due to Lethal Yellowing which apparently swept through Mexico too, just like it did in Florida and the Caribbean, the commercial growers started importing lots of Malayan seed nuts to sprout and replace the old original Mexican Talls, so many of the nuts washing up do to lots of cross pollination that occurs with the talls end of being Maymex nuts, with some being pure Malayans (mostly greens with a few goldens, and very rarely yellows like my sprout I just planted the other day), with few pure Mexican Talls that probably originate from very rural beach areas without much nearby commercial production, which would result in pure nuts.  I think those more desirable pure nuts originate from areas around La Pesca and northward along the coast, whereas areas from Tampico southward to Veracruz and along the Bay of Campeche have a lot more commercial production, with vast areas of commercial coconut farms along the beach in the southernmost Gulf (Bay of Campeche), where my friend in the Rio Grande Valley used to travel to.  He told me there are areas along the southern Bay of Campeche that have coconut plantations along the shoreline as far as the eye can see for many miles.

John