Turning a Water Oak Forest into a Tropical Paradise in NW Orlando

[flplantguy]

If hes hesitant tell him to go on treesaregood.org and find a local arborist to corroborate us both. They look awful in that pic too.  At least it will be his expense this time!

[Merlyn]

@Looking Glass yeah I was really happy with extending the borders a bit!  I had made a curve around that Chinensis just a bit too sharp, and continually caught the lawnmower's front wheel on the blocks.  The new curve is just gradual enough to avoid that, and gives me a few more feet of planting space.

@flplantguy I've told him about the ~40 year lifespan, but he just likes them too much.  The neighborhood was built in the mid 80s, and almost all of them are now dying.

Speaking of that, I had just enough time at lunch to finish digging out the stump grindings from the hole.  The guy did a pretty good job, and just broke through the main trunk to dirt in at least 4 spots in the middle (green circles).  It's still a 10-12' diameter hole I'll have to dig out, but it should be much easier than some extractions I've done!

[Merlyn]

And with a couple of evening's work the main section of stump is out!  I'll still need to slice off a few big roots near the surface, mostly around where the Ryobi blower is sitting. 

And my latest Floribunda order arrived yesterday!  In the front row are 4 Syagrus Lorenzoniorum seedlings, with two Dioon Rzedowskii just behind them.  The 3rd row is (L to R) 2 Burretiokentia Hapala and 4 Syagrus Amara, and the back row are two Ravenea Hildebrandtii and a Burretiokentia Koghiensis:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

[kinzyjr]

2 hours ago, Merlyn said:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

That's one heck of a lineup!  Good call on waiting until spring!

[RiverCityRichard]

4 hours ago, Merlyn said:

And with a couple of evening's work the main section of stump is out!  I'll still need to slice off a few big roots near the surface, mostly around where the Ryobi blower is sitting. 

And my latest Floribunda order arrived yesterday!  In the front row are 4 Syagrus Lorenzoniorum seedlings, with two Dioon Rzedowskii just behind them.  The 3rd row is (L to R) 2 Burretiokentia Hapala and 4 Syagrus Amara, and the back row are two Ravenea Hildebrandtii and a Burretiokentia Koghiensis:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

Syagrus Amara is one of my favorites. Be awesome to see you grow them up in our area. Nice haul!

[Merlyn]

@RiverCityRichard I'd been trying to buy Syagrus Amara for over a year, but managed to place my Floribunda order right as they sold out!  These were 4" pots trying to bust out of there...so hopefully they'll fill the 1g step-up pots by spring.

Today's silliness involved moving a B. Alfredii triple back South about 5 feet to give more space for the Encephalartos Gratus x Laurentianus on the right, staked up with the PVC pipe:

And after the move:

These were planted from big 1g pots a bit over 2 years ago, and had grown a bunch of roots straight down looking for the water table.  Interestingly they had NOT grown any significant roots to the sides.  That probably explains their tippiness in hurricanes.

I then filled 4 big trash cans with ferns from the back fenceline, and decided to take out the two more dead Viburnum:

In this cut you can clearly see the trunk fungal infection that's been killing all my Viburnum:

[Merlyn]

I forgot to post this cleanup area in the SE corner.  My parents visited for Thanksgiving and helped me move a huge Encephalartos Kisambo away from the Jubaea x Butia.  Originally I thought it was an E. Gratus, which only gets ~6' long fronds.  But the bigger Kisambo can easily grow 10-12' fronds and was badly crowding the JxB.  I had also planted a couple of Dypsis Pembana in the lower center of the photo, about 3 years ago.  They simply refused to grow any bigger:

The new view from the same side has a couple of "Variegated Mitis" that I grew from RPS seed...that did not turn out variegated.  Theoretically they'll be a good sound block in this area, assuming the upcoming cold fronts don't wipe them out!  The JxB in the center is still a bit buried, but it should grow up and above the nearby stuff now:

And from the opposite direction on the pathway.  It's still a bit of a jungle, but the lower center Cycas Guizhouensis and bottom right Dioon Edule will stay fairly small.  The blue-green JxB fronds in the center should make a good contrast:

[Meangreen94z]

Wow, spectacular !

[Merlyn]

With the cold weather it was a great time to cut down some more dying Viburnum.  Another 5 of them got chewed up by the Stihl chainsaw.  3 out of 5 were losing leaves and had the same visible fungal infection in the lower 2-3 feet of trunk. 

And last night the Dendrocalamus Latiflorus caught a fatal case of chainsaw-itis as well.  Hurricane Milton took off most of the leaves and broke the top 10-20ft of at least 50% of the culms.  And the frost in December and January took off almost all of the rest.  At 40-50ft and 4-5" diameter culms it's about half of the typical mature size.  I decided that a 60-80ft boo with 7-8" culms was just a bad idea:

Latiflorus is on the left, Maroochy is on the right.  Bambusa Cerossissima is peeking in on the left edge, and a recently transplanted Tiger Grass aka Thysanolaena Maxima is on the bottom right.  Here's the slightly open clumping of Latiflorus:

[Merlyn]

I also cut down and dug out the second cluster of Bambusa Tuldoides "Swollen Internode" aka "Cool Buddha."  This "bellied" okay in a semi-dry area with limited supplemental water.  The second division from the same plant reverted to 50' in a low wet & rich area.  So the choice on this one seems to be...don't feed it or water it and it'll stay dwarfed and bellied...but have crappy looking leaves with brown tips and striations.  Or feed it and water it and it reverts to huge size.  This is the same thing that happens with Bambusa Ventricosa "Giant Buddha Belly."  So out it goes!

[kinzyjr]

@Merlyn You've taken more plants out than you've planted... a holy sacrilege.  Repent by attending the spring sales and filling up your wagon 🚗

[Merlyn]

@kinzyjr sacrilege!!!    I still have somewhere around 950 individual plantings in the yard, and 56 cycads and 131 palms in pots.  I'm stocked up enough to think about "editing out" stuff to make space for new cool things.  Speaking of which, tonight I cut down the Dendrocalamus Maroochy too.  It had grown to 45' with 3" culms, and probably was *not* done growing bigger:

And the "drop zone" worked pretty well.  If I had let the 45 footers flush out with leaves they would have been awkwardly heavy, but as a 90% grown culm it wasn't too heavy:

[TropicsEnjoyer]

On 1/30/2025 at 8:56 PM, kinzyjr said:

@Merlyn You've taken more plants out than you've planted... a holy sacrilege.  Repent by attending the spring sales and filling up your wagon 🚗

It’s almost as if for some people, once you’ve had everything, having fewer things is a blessing in disguise.

[Merlyn]

@TropicsEnjoyer that is definitely true.  Over the past couple of years I have trashed or donated (depending on condition) a HUGE amount of "stuff" that I've collected over the past 20 or so years.  Some of it I've had for at least 30 years for some random project that I thought I would do.  Clearly, after 30 years, I was NOT going to ever do that project... 

9 hours of digging and slicing and dicing later, both Latiflorus and Maroochy are outta here!  The Maroochy was somewhat easier, being a fairly tight clumper.  The hole is only about 4 feet diameter and a foot deep.  Since it wasn't a rapid grower of new culms it was a lot easier to cut up.  This was the last chunk:

The Dendrocalamus Latiflorus, on the other hand, was a beast to remove.  The nursery people at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens are quoted as saying that taking culm sections from Bambusa Textilis "Kanapaha" is like cutting 2x4s underground, but you have no clue where they are or which way they are going.  Well...this was more like cutting 8x8s underground...with no clue where they were or which way they were going!  I also had to move a couple hundred pounds of the rocks, because it had been trying to grow culms up underneath.  It took a solid 6 hours to dig out this clump, roughly 7-8 feet diameter:

The first thing I did in the morning though was move this Caryota Monostachya.  It had been right between the two bamboos, and suffering a long term nitrogen deficiency.  It didn't seem to matter how much I fertilized it, the boos just stole all the nitrogen!  It's now in a shady spot between two of my larger Beccariophoenix Alfredii:

[Merlyn]

I finished planting out the SE corner for now.  As I posted in the Bamboo Thread, I took some culm divisions and planted them about 5' from the fenceline.  On the left and right are Bambusa Glaucophylla / Heterostachya green type (not variegated) is a ~15-20' bushy type on each side of half of a cluster of Bambusa Textilis "Albostriata."  The Albostriata used to be two clusters on the West side, but I planted them too close to the house:

Just to the right of that photo are the other 3 out of 4 divisions of Albostriata, with a more established Boniopsis in the background:

And tonight I finished up the SE corner with Emeiensis Viridiflavus "Yin Yang," Musa "Zebrina," Pervariabilis x Daii #8, and Oldhamii "Shoot Production."  This is just to the left of the above photos, so this whole corner is a big mess of boos!

[palmfriend]

While enjoying your thread with a cup of coffee this Saturday morning, it reminds me (again) of my own homework I haven't done yet... I guess when doing this year's spring cleaning up - in a month or so - editing will become the major part...

Thanks for all the updates!

Lars

 

[Merlyn]

@palmfriend I did a wee bit more editing today in the SW fenceline.  The last 7 big Viburnum shrubberies caught a case of chainsaw-itis.  It's hard to see in this photo, but the right one had started losing leaves fairly quickly.  The others looked ok still, but I've had enough of just waiting for them to slowly die one by one:

At my lunch break I'd cut down 5 out of 7:

7 hours of work later, they are all cut down, stacked and stumps extracted!  I cut the last one free in the foreground, took my tools inside, and less than a minute later it was pouring down rain.  Talk about perfect timing!

On tomorrow's vacation day I'll plant three medium sized bamboos in this area: Bambusa Emeiensis (regular green), Bambusa Eutuldoides Viridi-Vittata Inversa "Asian Lime," and Bambusa Pachinensis.  I've got Bambusa Nutans on order from Tropical Bamboo, but they haven't shipped it yet.  I'm also going to take some culm divisions from these Bambusa Textilis "Gracilis" to fill in the back row along the fenceline.  They haven't fully leafed out yet, so I will wait a couple of weeks for the culms to finish before splitting up some clusters:

[Merlyn]

On Monday's vacation day I cut up and hauled off the stumps and planted the three bamboozles about 5.5-6 feet from the fenceline.  Later I'll divide a couple of Gracilis clumps to continue the line past the white bird of paradise:

And then I took out the disappointing clump of Dendrocalamus Maximuslamina, which also turned out to be Minimusfrosthardiness.  It did have really huge leaves in the middle of summer, but was routinely defoliated by any frost and also lost the top half of all the culms any time it went below freezing.  It was less hardy than the Gigantochloa "Malaysian Black" peeking in on the left foreground of the photo, and *much* less hardy than the "Autograph plant"in front of it.  So for half the year it would look scraggly like this:

So I cut it down and then started digging out the culms.  Along the way I found my nemesis 1.5" pipe again!  This time I was sure it was somewhere in the area, so I was careful with the shovel and reciprocating saw.  The pipe was directly under the clump:

This time I took detailed measurements and photos, so I know exactly where this is.  If I get really enthusiastic later I may dig it up near the well and install a shutoff.

[Merlyn]

A little more revising to the East side...I planted a pair of Pinanga Phillippinensis last June along my walkway.  These did fine during ~31F and frost, though they were canopy protected.  I moved them to a spot under one of my larger Butia:

And filled their spot with a Rhapis Humilis from a bit further down the pathway.  I had transplanted the Humilis in October 2024 into a spot with more-or-less full sun.  It didn't like that...at all.  The shorter stems had leaves with a medium to lime green color, and the upper ones blanched yellow.  After ~4 months in that spot I decided it was not likely to survive full May drought sun.  The new leaves on the upper stems grew out greenish and immediately turned yellow with sunburn spotting.  So it's now sheltered by the Bismarck on the left and Alfredii on the right.  The foreground Cyphophoenix Nucele is doing great!

And on the East side hedgeline I decided I needed a taller noise block near the fence corner.  I moved an Encephalartos Ituriensis that I'd planted there last September down into the SE corner next to a Sabal Mauritiiformis:

And I replaced it in the hedgeline with the Bambusa Pervariabilis x Dendrocalamopsis Daii #8.  I had just planted that in the SE corner last week, so it was an easy move.  There's a good chance the Viburnum on the right is infected with the same root killing fungus, I'll have to keep an eye on it:

[Merlyn]

When I pulled the Bambusa Textilis Albostriata out of the West pathway, I had two big open holes.  The far left one is Dendrocalamopsis Variostriata that used to be in the South fenceline.  It's mostly leafless now but should leaf out in a few weeks.  The second clump is half of the Bambusa Textilis Ladyfinger/Richard Waldron that I just lopped off and moved over:

[kinzyjr]

@Merlyn You've been a plant-moving-and-mulching machine this spring!  I got tired just reading the stuff from January until now  

[Merlyn]

@kinzyjr yeah I had to take a couple of days off and do absolutely nothing.  On my biking I typically do 3 weeks "on" and 1 week "off," and I think I need to adopt this for landscaping and house work as well!  So of course I took it easy this last weekend and spent 2 days cleaning out the garage and biked 25 miles @ 19.3mph... 

Yesterday two more bamboos arrived from Tropical Bamboo.  In the SE corner I planted Gigantochloa Luteostriata #4776.  The Zebrina banana is already sprouting!

And to replace the MaximusLamina I bought a Dendrocalamus Tsiangii.  This one is supposed to be a bit like a "Mini Ghost."  I found that Dendrocalamus Minor Amoenus (Ghost or Angel Mist) was just waaaay too big with a ~35' height and a top that spread out easily to 30' or more.  So we'll see what happens with this one.  Right now it's pretty small:

[Merlyn]

Last weekend I finished up the area around the D. Tsiangii.  I moved the Cycas Revoluta x Diannanensis about 4 feet to the left of the water pipe, and left a stub of random scrap PVC pipe sticking up to mark where it's lurking.  I added two more Livistona Muelleri in the bottom right to make a triple, and added a triple Syagrus Sancona big strap-leaf seedling just behind the Rev x Diann. 

In the backyard I spread out 15 bags of mulch, added a seedling Sabal Mauritiiformis to an older planting to make a double, and did the same with an Allagoptera Arenaria.  Here's the Sabal, the bigger one was planted as a strap leaf in April 2019...very slow!

In the front yard an Agave Vilmoriana "Octopus" bloomed, so I chopped it up and trashed it.  I don't need 500 new Octopus bulbils...  This one was planted and moved at least a couple of times, but originally bought in August 2018.  It's not exactly a "century" plant. 

[Merlyn]

And with Lethal Bronzing running through the neighborhood I decided it was pointless to keep growing a Phoenix Canariensis in a prime front yard spot:

And I replaced it with a Corypha Lecomtei big strap leaf.  I bought this from ChuckG a couple of years ago and it's languished in a pot.  Hopefully I didn't break the taproot when planting it!

[Mazat]

22 minutes ago, Merlyn said:

And with Lethal Bronzing running through the neighborhood I decided it was pointless to keep growing a Phoenix Canariensis in a prime front yard spot:

And I replaced it with a Corypha Lecomtei big strap leaf.  I bought this from ChuckG a couple of years ago and it's languished in a pot.  Hopefully I didn't break the taproot when planting it!

Great work. Looks excellent. The work was more than worth it. Yesterday we finally had over 68 degrees fahrenheit and my colleague even got sunburnt 😬

[Merlyn]

Yesterday was mostly cleanup work, like cleaning up the back porch, stepping up a pair of newly bought Licuala Ramsayi from 3g to 7g and spraying all those $*#(@#*$ weeds with 2,4-D again.  The last batch of weedkiller I made in October and it had been sitting in part sun over the entire winter.  So I think it had degraded and was mostly useless.  So I mixed up a new batch and went over most of the yard, including around this second blooming Agave Vilmoriana / Octopus:

The "Stairway to Heaven" agave hybrid on the bottom right is getting ready to bloom too, you can tell by the narrowing center fronds.  So I'll have to replace both of these with something new!

At the Leu Gardens plant sale we also bought a 100lb concrete dragon's head to go in the front walkway.  It has holes for the eyes and a spot for a tiki torch light behind it.  I have low voltage landscape lighting along the walkway, so I'll run a line over there and light the eyes from behind:

[Merlyn]

This repair goes along the lines of...fix it once right or fix it again.  I hit this irrigation line with a shovel at the driveway end in August 2019, then at the corner around August 2020, then it sprung a leak at a valve in October.  A couple of days ago I noticed that the well was running randomly when we weren't using water, and found it had cracked at a "T" next to my October patch.  There was an old oak root directly under the T and it had been pushing it upwards for 40ish years.  So this time I dug a 15' long trench and replaced the entire pipe section after removing the oak root and flattening the soil under it:

[TropicsEnjoyer]

On 3/10/2025 at 8:45 AM, Merlyn said:

The "Stairway to Heaven" agave hybrid on the bottom right is getting ready to bloom too, you can tell by the narrowing center fronds.  So I'll have to replace both of these with something new!

Are the agaves you have mostly solitary, hence you remove them because they will not pup replacements? 

Also what’s the yucca on the far left?

Very nice biz btw, and rip the canary.

[Merlyn]

1 hour ago, TropicsEnjoyer said:

Are the agaves you have mostly solitary, hence you remove them because they will not pup replacements? 

Also what’s the yucca on the far left?

Very nice biz btw, and rip the canary.

I do have a mix of solitary and clustering agaves, for example the Octopus one is solitary but the Angustifolia and "Stairway to Heaven" are moderately clustering types.  In this case the Vilmoriana produces bulbils, so theoretically I would end up with 500+ babies from each one.  But I had other agaves to replace them immediately, so I didn't feel like leaving them there to finish blooming.  In the front I moved in a Mapisaga "Lisa" that was in too much shade on the NE corner:

And I moved a different Octopus from the front NE back to replace the one next to the Bismarck.  On the right the Stairway to Heaven hybrid's leaves are getting smaller and curving inwards near the top, so it'll probably bloom in a month or so.

And in the SW corner I divided the Bambusa Gracilis in the background and pulled out 3 sets of canes to fill in the gap:

[Merlyn]

@TropicsEnjoyer I forgot to answer the question on the Yucca.  I got it from one of my neighbors.  It had grown out to block their RV parking spot, so they were digging out several offsets.  My best guess is Elephantipes, as they just called it a "Spanish Dagger."  My recollection (maybe wrong) is that Gloriosa doesn't grow the larger trunk footprint.  This one is starting to expand the base:

[FlaPalmLover]

Yuccas are pretty neat. I like the beaked yuccas too.

[flplantguy]

I would gobsmacked if that WASNT elephantipes, i had one for years and it was that exact look including the stem/trunk detail.  Flowers are edible too, but boring, and used in salads in Mexico.  A neat one i may need to look into getting again since i have the space now. That one looks happy and fast too.

[TropicsEnjoyer]

1 hour ago, flplantguy said:

A neat one i may need to look into getting again since i have the space now

They’re common houseplants tbh, I would plant something a bit more interesting if I were you. I have one myself that I recently got for free, in that case I won’t be too picky. 😅

[Merlyn]

@kinzyjr a crossfit gym down the street just closed, I should have rented my backyard out to them.  They could have helped me with this past week's wheelbarrow workout.    This was about 28 half-wheelbarrow loads of Missouri limestone, guesstimating about 10,000lb from the SE corner to the SW fenceline:

And today I dug 9 spots along the fenceline where the Viburnum used to be.  I took Bambusa Textilis Gracilis divisions to fill out the last gaps.  It was supposed to rain all day, but I managed to finish putting down the mulch just before the rain...and finished putting in the water line and drippers during the storm:

And from the other side:

[Mazat]

11 hours ago, Merlyn said:

@kinzyjr a crossfit gym down the street just closed, I should have rented my backyard out to them.  They could have helped me with this past week's wheelbarrow workout.    This was about 28 half-wheelbarrow loads of Missouri limestone, guesstimating about 10,000lb from the SE corner to the SW fenceline:

And today I dug 9 spots along the fenceline where the Viburnum used to be.  I took Bambusa Textilis Gracilis divisions to fill out the last gaps.  It was supposed to rain all day, but I managed to finish putting down the mulch just before the rain...and finished putting in the water line and drippers during the storm:

And from the other side:

it grows every day, extremely exciting to look at, this variety, every single plant you add integrates wonderfully.

you design it perfectly, a true pleasure 🤗👍😄 

[Merlyn]

On Easter Sunday I started and (almost) finished a new section of bed up along the road.  I had been thinking about this spot for at least 6 months, but just hadn't picked the collection of plants to go into it.  Since I drive in and out on this side all the time I figured it was a good spot for some shorter palms and cycads.  I added about 8 or 9 feet in width and moved the big 400lb rock to the corner.  I'll put a house number on it one of these years...

Flanking the rock are my last two Gaussia Princeps.  Continuing to the right in the front row sun are a Cycas Guizhouensis, Encephalartos Natalensis x Middleburgensis and an Encephalartos Ferox.  Just to the right and behind the rock is a Dioon Rzedowskii.  In the shade of the Butia are (L to R) a Lanonia Dasyantha, two Burretiokentia Hapala, a Cycas Debaoensis (almost guaranteed to be a hybrid Multifrondis), a Cycas Diannanensis, and another Cycas Debaoensis (maybe 10% chance of being a real one).

To the right of the above picture I tapered it into the existing edger blocks.  You can see the Ferox on the left side, then from L to R an Encephalartos Transvenosus x Princeps, a Gaussia Princeps triple that I moved forward (it was next to the Sabal Causiarum), just behind it an Encephalartos Paucidentatus, then a triple Agave Celsii "Multicolor" and finally four small Dioon Edule "Rio Verde" seedlings in front of the agave collection.

You can tell I haven't run the sprinklers in a while, the yard has gone almost completely dormant with the drought.

[Merlyn]

Along the front walkway I had a Dioon Mejiae in the shade next to the new dragon head.  I moved that to the East side pathway behind the cluster of Rhapis Humilis.  The Humilis is looking a LOT better being under the shade of the Bismarck on the left and a 25' tall Alfredii to the right.

To replace the Mejiae is a Dioon Tomasellii:

And just to the left of that I planted a Zamia Nesophila under the Beccariophoenix Fenestralis.  It's a little crowded and tough to see, but that should give it some time to acclimate to lots of sun.  MB Palms had these in nearly full sun, and they only looked a bit blanched:

[kinzyjr]

41 minutes ago, Merlyn said:

You can tell I haven't run the sprinklers in a while, the yard has gone almost completely dormant with the drought.

That's what just about everyone's yard looks like if they aren't running up the water bill.

[Merlyn]

I forgot a couple of palms from last weekend!  Under the Butia next to the driveway I planted two Arenga Hookeriana and a Chamaedorea Ernesti-Augusti.  These were getting blanched yellow in a bit too much sun in the nursery area, and clearly need some fertilizer...

In the SE corner I planted out the edge of the pathway.  From left to right I added a Cycas Panzhihuaensis x Debaoensis, a Cycas Guizhouensis, a solo Beccariophoenix Alfredii, a Revoluta x Debaoensis, two Syagrus Amara, a Revoluta x Diannanensis, a pair of Syagrus Lorenzoniorum, and then on the opposite side of the path a Dioon Rzedowskii.  Now this area is done except for rearranging the pot storage and cleaning up and mulching the pathway.

In the front yard I inventoried the 17 dead agaves and aloes that didn't make it through the past winter's frosts, and transplanted a big Agave Vilmoriana (Octopus) to the middle:

That one came from the other side of the driveway in the below photo.  It was sort of stuck in a random weird spot in the palms, and made more sense for it to be in the agave bed.  I moved the Revoluta x Debaoensis from the lower left (the dirt patch) to the upper right.  It was way too close to the driveway and turned out to be a superclustering type.  So now it has a good 10' to 12' diameter circle where it can cluster away without covering half the driveway.  I also planted three Chamberyonia in a spot partly shaded by the bamboo and a tall Ficus Auriculata, making a triple of Watermelon and two Hookeri.  I haven't figured out what to fill in the empty spot yet, but I'm probably going to move the two circled Debaoensis (Multifrondis most likely) towards the driveway. 

[Merlyn]

In the front center spot I had transplanted a smallish Butia x Jubaea back on October 2nd.  Exactly one week later Hurricane Milton came through and flattened it.  I'd hoped that it would survive, but eventually it just fell apart.  So I replaced it with an Arenga Westerhoutii that I grew from RPS seed (bottom right) and a somewhat bedraggled Encephalartos Laurentianus.  I definitely need to go fertilize my nursery area...

And in the East side bed I filled in the final plantings for this bed.  I had planted a Copernicia Fallaensis seedling last summer, and put in two Cycas Panzhihuaensis x Debaoensis and one Cycas Panzhihuaensis to fill in the gaps: