Cyphophoenix nucele...Anyone Growing This?

[tim_brissy_13]

Slow but steady for C nucele here in Melbourne. Probably not an ideal climate, but it’s trouble free and stays a deep green. It’s a bit stretched out and fronds droop more than typical probably because it’s in mostly shade at this stage. Hard to get a good photo due to the larger palms around it, including the Chrysalidocarpus arenarum to the right in the photo which protects it from the north side. 
 

[Tracy]

On 10/23/2025 at 1:52 AM, tim_brissy_13 said:

Slow but steady for C nucele here in Melbourne. Probably not an ideal climate, but it’s trouble free and stays a deep green. It’s a bit stretched out and fronds droop more than typical probably because it’s in mostly shade at this stage. Hard to get a good photo due to the larger palms around it, including the Chrysalidocarpus arenarum to the right in the photo which protects it from the north side. 
 

Tim, my experience is similar.   Cyphophoenix nucele is steady but not speedy.  This was probably planted in 2016 and was in a 7 gallon pot.  It has a few rings of trunk and ring spacing is about 2 1/2"  to maybe 3".  Cyphophoenix elegans seems a tad bit faster for me.

[Harry’s Palms]

Going into winter , although you would never know it here . The Cyphophoenix is still doing quite well . The new frond from my last post a couple months ago has lost most of its copper sheen and is a nice dark green . It seems to be trucking along just fine . A new spear is still gaining size and the palm has survived a couple of strong wind events unscathed , which surprised me . One tough palm for Southern California AND evidently further north . @Jim in Los Altos has one that is doing marvelous . I always get a bit nervous planting out a new species in the garden . I am not as experienced as some of you , since joining in on the fun with Palm Talk , it has encouraged me to me to stretch out a bit . Over a year ago , I introduced other Dypsis/Chrysalidiocarpus  and a nice Rhopalostylus. They all did just fine here , gaining size and loving my watering schedule , certainly  not phased by our winter . Harry

[mnorell]

2 hours ago, Harry’s Palms said:

Going into winter , although you would never know it here . The Cyphophoenix is still doing quite well . The new frond from my last post a couple months ago has lost most of its copper sheen and is a nice dark green . It seems to be trucking along just fine . A new spear is still gaining size and the palm has survived a couple of strong wind events unscathed , which surprised me . One tough palm for Southern California AND evidently further north . @Jim in Los Altos has one that is doing marvelous . I always get a bit nervous planting out a new species in the garden . I am not as experienced as some of you , since joining in on the fun with Palm Talk , it has encouraged me to me to stretch out a bit . Over a year ago , I introduced other Dypsis/Chrysalidiocarpus  and a nice Rhopalostylus. They all did just fine here , gaining size and loving my watering schedule , certainly  not phased by our winter . Harry

Harry, you never know until you try...Pauleen Sullivan was a true adventuress and was unafraid to try unusual species, and she enjoyed marked success, as many of us know...and John Tallman was the first I'm aware of in the Ventura area to systematically trial and record and publish his results with every species he could try. He did us all a great service and it's sad that so many of his accomplishments were dispersed to the highest bidder by the college that had previously enjoyed the notoriety of his efforts. I still have one of his detailed reports from back in the day and I find it to be a very interesting and useful reference.

I've lived in several different climates and always try pretty much everything that I can get my hands on, even sometimes if they are initially unappealing to me (since palms can grow on us!). I've tried some seemingly ridiculous things out here in the low desert and had some successes, but I planted Cyphophoenix elegans a few years ago thinking it might have the best chance in its genus...and my largest one just slowed down (from "slow" to "extra slow") and then just collapsed on me this year. I have no idea what mechanism was at work, and I still have one or two small ones doing okay for now (still frustratingly slow). Meanwhile I had a bad experience with C. nucele in the Florida Keys, it literally just sat there and barely grew for a couple of years, then was physically wiped out by Hurricane Irma. Just on a lark I planted a very small one here in the desert in the same bed with my C. elegans specimens, and lo and behold, it has grown very well! So I ordered a couple more from Jeff Marcus and they are awaiting a spot in the ground. The main issue out here, aside from the obvious one of irrigation, is sun-exposure during the hot season, and the long leaves (the main thing I love about the species) are a concern for me if they succeed in clearing the roof or the shelter-belt of canopy-trees I've been developing. So time will tell, but the long and the short of it is that it's worth trying things, and multiple times in multiple exposures/conditions, if you love the plant enough, to see if it can adapt to your particular situation. We wouldn't have the beautiful bottle palms in San Diego or the Sonoran desert today if everyone had listened to prevailing ideas for decades that they were just impossible outside the tropics or near-tropics.

[Harry’s Palms]

@mnorell Pauline Sullivan , Karl Doebler , and John Tallman were very inspirational to me when I started in 1990. Karl used to have some of John’s seedlings in the green house at Green Thumb in ventura . I bought many from there and some are still alive! Terry Sullivan told me the C. Decipiens that are so beautiful started out as 3 seeds his mom and dad got prior to 1951 , when he was born. Daring to say the least , no information or prior history to go by. 
  Thank you for the info on the C. Nucele , I am hopeful for success with it . I am treating it as a shade palm here , with fractured sun during the afternoon. I have a Roystonia Oleracae that I got from Phil at JM over 25 years ago. The thought of a Royal Palm with a smaller trunk was incentive to try it. Phil said “ no way that will survive in Santa Paula “ . It is thriving ….so far. Well worth the $100 I spent on a small 3 gallon baby. I got into this on the heels of some great folks who were before me. Harry

[Jim in Los Altos]

Photo from today on this pleasant afternoon. Although this C. nucele does well here, it’s my only palm that occasionally attracts scale on old leaves primarily this time of year. I scrubbed them off one frond yesterday.

 

 

[Harry’s Palms]

Wow Jim . That is nice , a very large frond on that. It looks like a Chambeyronia is trying to steal the show !🙂 . I have a Cocothrinax Barbadensis that gets a bit of scale now and then . I have always wondered why just that palm . I have had minor outbreaks on other palms that have resolved with intervention but the Cocothrinax is reoccurring. Harry