Palm ID please! Phoenix hybrid something?

[Merlyn]

I picked up this palm in a ~25g pot size this spring from Green's in Apopka, just because I kind of wanted a Phoenix Dactylifera for some odd reason.  It's been in the ground for ~5 months now and other palms I've planted around the same time are growing significantly faster.  Two Pindos have both grown several new leaves despite being badly rootbound, and a Canary has grown 4-6 full size leaves from a trunk about the same size as this one.  All of them had similar trunk sizes and were fairly rootbound when I planted them.  So either it's not happy where it is (4-6 hours direct sun), or it's spending too much energy growing offshoots, or it's some kind of hybrid with a slower growing species like Theophrasti or Rupicola.  Any suggestions on ID?  For reference, Green's had a lot of these in 25-65g pots and they are all extremely prolific offsetters, with fronds about 6 feet in total length.

I did treat it for the fungus, and the 2 new fronds (as small as they are) are all clean, and the brown tips were from poor watering from a clogged dripper in May.

[GMann]

That looks to me like a Phoenix canariensis. Maybe its a hybrid of Canary x Robellini. But I don't see any reason to not think its pure Canary at this stage.

Looks like it has a ton of suckers on it. I'd remove those if I were you. Id also remove the weeds that are growing around the base.

[Merlyn]

Thanks for the reply, I initially thought Canary as well due to the single plane leaflets after the first few inches of rachis.  But I thought (pure) Canary were non-suckering.  I cut about 10-20 suckers off of the fence side when I planted it, and a few have grown back as seen in the 3rd picture.  With all the suckers it's a stabby mess to weed around it, but I wanted to get a better idea of what it was before slicing off the rest of the suckers. I was thinking part Theophrasti because of the enormous number of suckers, but the mostly flat-plane leaflets aren't too similar to a Theophrasti.

It looks a bit like these photos of a "Phoenix Medjool" found online, but I noted both of them show a single leaflet at the tip.  My palm (I think) has paired leaflets at the tip, though I would have to look closer when I get home.

[GMann]

I think pure Canaries do sucker. Theophrasti is a very rare palm, very few people grow it or sell it so the chances of it being part Theophrasti are very small.

You said you have planted another Canary of similar size, how does it differ in appearance from that one?

When you say you treated it for fungus, what did you use? And where did you apply it? I only ask because I have a similar looking Phoenix that I believe is a Canary (but mine has no suckers). So perhaps I should treat mine too.

[Josue Diaz]

Canariensis is a non-suckering palm. This looks more like reclinata to me, especially with it suckering so heavily at a young age. 

[Jim in Los Altos]

P. canariensis never sucker. Could be reclinata x roebelenii. I'd keep it at three trunks so as not to end up being way too dense. 

[GMann]

I often see suckers on small Canary palms. So that must mean that those ones were all hybrids. Interesting...

 

I believe that the hybrid Canaries are actually more resistant to diseases like Fusarium, is that true?

[Kris]

To me it looks like a CIDP x Date palm. I had a date palm growing in our garden which had a trunk pattern very similar to your clumping palm. Once your palm puts of seeds it will become more clear to us. Hope it turns out to be a female palm.

Btw. the palm that was growing in our garden died out of fungus infection due to heavy rains and water stagnating in its feet for few weeks.

Love,

Kris.

[Merlyn]

I'm fairly certain that it has some CIDP heritage, now that I look at my young (relatively pure) CIDP and a few at local nurseries.  The leaflet spacing is way too close together and too single-plane to be a true date palm.

I was discounting reclinata as a contributor because I'm growing 3x of what I thought were reclinata in the front and side yards.  However, these actually look more like Bergstrom's Loureiroi var humilis photos with very stout paired thorns.  I haven't seen thorns this short and thick in any reclinata photos, though I have seen it in a few 10+ foot tall edible date palms.  Below are two pictures of my "reclinata" and Bergstrom's close up thorn view.

BTW - I used Banrot in a soil drench for the CIDP and the phoenix in question, about 2.5 gallons on each palm.  I also poured a little bit of the mix down the crown, just in case there was some rotting/fungus'd material down there.  They both grew out clean new fronds so I'm pretty happy with it.

[Merlyn]

I looked at a local Reclinata that's been there for 20+ years, and it also has the relatively long and spiky thorns, and definitely very different from my front yard "Senegal Date Palm" specimens.  I'm thinking that my front yard palms are not really Reclinata and more of a Loureroi hybrid of some sort, similar to Bergstrom's Loureroi var humilis palm.  So the palm in question might well be a reclinata or a hybrid very similar to a pure Reclinata.  The thorns and frond shape seem very similar to a CIPD x Reclinata, but it might be too small to show the same size and shape as Bergstrom's version shown with iwan's post on 4/1/18 here:

I did confirm this evening that the frond shape was a single end leaflet and not a dual leaflet, so at least I'm sure it's a Phoenix type and not crazy and trying to compare it to a Majesty or Areca palm!!! 

[Marius]

On the same topic. I saw this one last week in a small Free State town that has very cold winters. Any ideas on what Phoenix sp or hybrid it is?  

[Cikas]

On 25. 10. 2018., GMann said:

That looks to me like a Phoenix canariensis. Maybe its a hybrid of Canary x Robellini. But I don't see any reason to not think its pure Canary at this stage.

Looks like it has a ton of suckers on it. I'd remove those if I were you. Id also remove the weeds that are growing around the base.

CIDP is not suckering palm. Soo this is not CIDP. 

[Cikas]

On 26. 10. 2018., GMann said:

I often see suckers on small Canary palms. So that must mean that those ones were all hybrids. Interesting...

 

I believe that the hybrid Canaries are actually more resistant to diseases like Fusarium, is that true?

CIDP does not have suckers in any stage of its life. CIDP is solitary palm. Soo palms you have seen are not CIDP but some other phoenix species or hybrids. 

[Kris]

19 hours ago, Cikas said:

CIDP is not suckering palm. Soo this is not CIDP. 

Yes,But any variety of phoenix can hybridize freely.And CIDP is no exception !

 

[Merlyn]

I finally got a chance to take a couple of pictures of my front yard CIDP, it also had a pretty significant fungal infection and was treated with Banrot soil drench.  The new fronds are clean, and only the ends of the older ones still have fungus on them.  It's probably not pure CIDP due to the not entirely flat plane of the leaflets, but it's still young.  Almost all the fronds shown are new since it was planted in May, so fairly quick growth in 5 months.

[GMann]

2 hours ago, Merlyn2220 said:

I finally got a chance to take a couple of pictures of my front yard CIDP, it also had a pretty significant fungal infection and was treated with Banrot soil drench. 

Is that the best fungicide to use? It seems expensive ($80 online). It says it treats Fusarium, which I thought was untreatable.

[sonoranfans]

that is very likely a reclinata hybrid and there are several possibilities.  CIDP do not sucker, saw hundreds in arizona where I lived for 10 years.  But a CIDP hybrid could sucker.  I had a reclinata/carinensis hybrid in arizona, it was a stabbing beast that was the worst palm ever to trim.  I received many wounds from the many long thorns and even the leaflets could poke you.  I once contemplated making it a "burning" bush, but it was 15' overall by then, a big palm.  Pure reclinatas are somewhat rare, these phoenix sp hyrbidize readily, even in the wild.  If you want a phoenix to grow to its [potential in florida, rupicola/reclinata is the one that will do the best.  The others prefer a mediterranean or even a desert(dactylifera) climate.  Your palm might not like getting wet too frequently.  I see the CIDP's here in florida and they just don't grow nearly as well as those out west.  The florida ones mostly have a relatively skinny trunk and smaller, less expansive crowns.  Out west in AZ, CA, a healthy CIDP can have 3+' diameter of the bare trunk.

[Merlyn]

I'm not sure if it's the best fungicide or if it's actually effective against Fusarium, but I bought a 2lb bag of powder for $80, or $2.50/oz.  At 0.12oz per gallon of soil drench, it's about $0.30 per gallon.  I used 1-2 gallons per palm so it's not too expensive on a small scale.  It's also supposed to be effective against Black Scorch/Thielaviopsis, at least according to the test results I read on Etridiazole and Thiophanate-Methyl.  A single dose appeared to clear up the leaflet/petiole fungus on the couple of palms I've used it on, but it's always possible that they would have grown out of the fungus given decent amounts of sunlight and nutrition.  I did have a couple of agave and aloes that developed a leaf rot.  I spritzed 3 out of 4 of them and the 3 all lived, the 4th rotted to the core and died.  So it does seem effective, at least in my limited experiments.

I found an earlier May photo of the palm in question.  I believe I had trimmed off a few offsets on the bottom right of the pot, but I'm starting to think that some type of reclinata is correct for this guy.  I looked at a couple of 30ft tall reclinata clumps yesterday and the petiole/thorn/leaflet shape and excessive clustering are really, really similar.  So perhaps this one is (mostly) reclinata.  That means the other 3 I planted that and posted above are something different!  Maybe I've been asking for an ID on the wrong palm...   

[Merlyn]

Yesterday at lunch I finally got frustrated with the lack of growth on this palm, and dug it up to trash it.  It had been continuing to grow new fronds but they were all very short, and all the older fronds (even on the offsets) were dying way too fast.  But it kept on popping up new offsets so I figured that whatever was wrong might not be fatal.  It turns out that I didn't do a good enough job of root pruning when I planted it from the pot.  I had cut off all the "girdling" roots and anything that looked rotten, but there was a void just below the root initiation zone, in the center of the root ball.  In the first photo you can see all the bare roots, every single one of the pencil-diameter roots was dead, and the whole plant was surviving off of a few small fine roots coming out of the top perimeter.  In the second photo I hacked off all the dead roots (nearly all of them) and all but 3 of the larger offsets.  I replanted it in the 3rd picture, being very careful to "wash in" dirt around the root zone to make sure there were no voids this time!  Hopefully it survives, I hate to lose plants through my own carelessness!

Edited February 27, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Merlyn]