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

[mnorell]

On 12/10/2025 at 2:17 PM, Jim in Los Altos said:

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.

 

 

 

On 12/10/2025 at 4:28 PM, Harry’s Palms said:

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

Jim and Harry--

Have either of you tried using coffee as a defense against scale? Tom Broome of the Cycad Society in Florida published an article on this subject at the height of the cycad scale nightmare when it hit Florida. I believe the story was that he was visiting the house of a society member and all the fellow's cycads looked great...scratching his head, Tom asked him, why aren't your plants overwhelmed with scale? He replied something to the effect that he had no idea...since all he did was put coffee grounds down for compost/fertilizer. After further investigation (providing I'm properly remembering these details) it was discovered that the crawling stage of the scale can't get through the coffee grounds, I believe due to some toxicity they experience when they emerge from the ground. So maybe try spreading coffee grounds all around the trunks of the affected palms and see if it has any beneficial effect. I think you can still find his article somewhere online, probably in the cycad society journal.

[Tracy]

16 hours ago, mnorell said:

 

Jim and Harry--

Have either of you tried using coffee as a defense against scale? Tom Broome of the Cycad Society in Florida published an article on this subject at the height of the cycad scale nightmare when it hit Florida. I believe the story was that he was visiting the house of a society member and all the fellow's cycads looked great...scratching his head, Tom asked him, why aren't your plants overwhelmed with scale? He replied something to the effect that he had no idea...since all he did was put coffee grounds down for compost/fertilizer. After further investigation (providing I'm properly remembering these details) it was discovered that the crawling stage of the scale can't get through the coffee grounds, I believe due to some toxicity they experience when they emerge from the ground. So maybe try spreading coffee grounds all around the trunks of the affected palms and see if it has any beneficial effect. I think you can still find his article somewhere online, probably in the cycad society journal.

Michael, if it works it isn't a universal fix.  I tried this years ago, before our green waste started accepting food waste as well as yard cuttings.  I religiously collected the grounds from my daily coffee addiction and spread them throughout the garden at the bases of my palms.  Good air flow seems the best solution to discourage scale and mealy bugs.  It is the parts of the garden that are the most densely packed that I still see problems.  I use a high pressure water flow from the hose, and when in reach, wiping them down with a damp rag or paper towel.  My wife doesn't like walking under or brushing up against things with scale or black mold, so she helps with this task sometimes. 

[Harry’s Palms]

I use a soapy solution and a paper towel . After a few times , the scale stays away …for a while. I may try the coffee trick on my Cocothrinax , I just worry about acidity . Harry

[Brad52]

Mine is leaning away from the adjacent heliconia as tho offended.

[Harry’s Palms]

That is a large one! @Brad52 your growth rate is about 3x mine but how old is that one? Harry

[Brad52]

1 hour ago, Harry’s Palms said:

That is a large one! @Brad52 your growth rate is about 3x mine but how old is that one? Harry

Harry, I believe it’s four years from a Floribunda 1 gallon.

[Palms1984]

There’s a Cyphophoenix nucele growing at the San Diego Botanical Gardens.  I remember it being a very small plant back in 2010.  It has grown into quite a large tree in the last 15 years.  This photo is from September of 2023.  I believe it’s got 15 to 16 ft of cleam trunk, unfortunately you can’t see the bottom of the trunk. 

[Harry’s Palms]

I will have to look for that next time I go down there. @Brad52 that’s pretty fast in your climate. Mine is still what I consider a freshly planted juvenile but it has shown steady growth . It came from @DoomsDave and our climates are similar , so no set back. Harry

[mnorell]

On 12/16/2025 at 9:31 AM, Tracy said:

Michael, if it works it isn't a universal fix.  I tried this years ago, before our green waste started accepting food waste as well as yard cuttings.  I religiously collected the grounds from my daily coffee addiction and spread them throughout the garden at the bases of my palms.  Good air flow seems the best solution to discourage scale and mealy bugs.  It is the parts of the garden that are the most densely packed that I still see problems.  I use a high pressure water flow from the hose, and when in reach, wiping them down with a damp rag or paper towel.  My wife doesn't like walking under or brushing up against things with scale or black mold, so she helps with this task sometimes. 

Tracy, that's interesting about the air-flow issue, I wonder if that may also make them more visible to lacewings or other predators and thus more readily predated? I realize now you probably already know this whole sequence of events during the big scale invasion and Tom Broome's article, etc, since you are obviously a skilled cycad grower for some many years now. One thing I omitted previously was that his article also stated that making a "coffee tea" with the leftover grounds and spraying this all over the top of the crown and on the leaves would provide additional benefits (if memory serves me), I assume through making the leaves very un-tasty to the establishing scale?

I've used coffee grounds off and on for many years as mulch and I can't say if that made any pest-control difference for my own gardens, since I just never was conscious of any scale to speak of on anything, including any cycads or palms I was growing (and pertinent to this thread, I've not noticed any such issues with my Cyphophoenix nucele, which seems quite carefree here in the low desert). I did have a friend in Natchez who years ago installed a dozen or so mature Sabal palmetto in her yard, and a couple of years into that, they developed a terrible case of scale, all over the bottoms of the leaves...obviously not an easy fix since those leaves were about 12' above the ground. I suggested she use Harry's technique more or less, to spray water with a relatively small amount of mild dish-soap on the undersides of the leaves, and it worked...they disappeared and apparently never revisited those palms.

[PalmBossTampa]

Here’s one planted at Gizella Kopsick Arboratum in St Petersburg FL. Beautiful species. I have a 3gal specimen

[Tracy]

18 hours ago, Palms1984 said:

There’s a Cyphophoenix nucele growing at the San Diego Botanical Gardens.  I remember it being a very small plant back in 2010.  It has grown into quite a large tree in the last 15 years.  This photo is from September of 2023.  I believe it’s got 15 to 16 ft of cleam trunk, unfortunately you can’t see the bottom of the trunk. 

Fortunately it survived when a tree from the ridge above the deck and canyon fell.  It stripped some of the fronds and a Pritchardia above the canyon was totally demolished.  Yhat specimen was the motivation for me to acquire and plant mine when the garden was still Quail Botanical Garden.

[Billy]

On 12/17/2025 at 4:24 PM, PalmBossTampa said:

Here’s one planted at Gizella Kopsick Arboratum in St Petersburg FL. 

That looks like Cyphophoenix elegans.

[PalmBossTampa]

2 hours ago, Billy said:

That looks like Cyphophoenix elegans.

Hmmm, I’m trusting the signs for my learning. Perhaps a crew of Palmtalkers should tour gardens and try to correct what’s needed or build a stronger understanding in the process 

I have a nucele and elegans both in 3gal and can tell difference. I look forward to learning their differences through their whole life from here. I don’t see any other (real life planted ) examples of Nucele around to compare .

[Perito]

Mine is planted in a very exposed spot. This is the best it has looked. I have battled scale on it since before it was put in the ground. 

[Tracy]

9 hours ago, PalmBossTampa said:

Hmmm, I’m trusting the signs for my learning. Perhaps a crew of Palmtalkers should tour gardens and try to correct what’s needed or build a stronger understanding in the process 

I have a nucele and elegans both in 3gal and can tell difference. I look forward to learning their differences through their whole life from here. I don’t see any other (real life planted ) examples of Nucele around to compare .

I have to say I agree with Billy, that the specimen in your photos looks more like Cyphophoenix elegans than nucele. 

The first is color on a C elegans young trunk and the second is C nucele. 

[tim_brissy_13]

17 hours ago, Tracy said:

I have to say I agree with Billy, that the specimen in your photos looks more like Cyphophoenix elegans than nucele. 

The first is color on a C elegans young trunk and the second is C nucele. 

Want to play ‘guess the trunk and crownshaft’? Here’s mine: