Any update on these palms? Have they planted new ones? Or were they smart enough to go with local plants and trees instead of trying to look like a gulf coast beach resort. 

Winstar is in thackerville ok - average low 29 in January. Fort Worth is at 35/36. Not that they can’t handle that but overall that means way more days in the teens. It would be tougher to get one established and it would require more precise siting 

Those ones from before last year probably were put in with 8+ feet of trunk 

Edited February 11, 20224 yr by DreaminAboutPalms

I have forgotten what the low was at the Casino but I took some screen shot at some point during the Arctic Blast of Durant, and nearby McCurtain county, Ok. 
It did get colder than these numbers. 

I passed by the palms at the Choctaw Casino in March, and again this week. They got wrapped during the winter and still took a bad beating. Some of them are likely dead, as I couldn't see any green growth on them. Others were clearly pushing out new growth though.

On 1/27/2021 at 4:28 AM, Alex High said:

Hello fellow palm lovers,

While searching for some cultivated palms in the towns of southern Oklahoma, I was incredibly surprised to find a photo of some quite large Sabal palmetto and Trachys at the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma. At first, I assumed it was a photo of a resort in Florida or along the gulf coast, but then I did some more searching and it really is in Oklahoma! Not just that, but another Choctaw Casino in the town of Grant, Oklahoma also has big Sabal palmetto! Choctaw Casinos are a chain of eight Native American-owned casinos throughout Oklahoma, three of which are also resorts. They clearly like palms and probably planted them to attract visitors and give the casinos that "tropical" look. I am quite surprised that no one has posted about this before. The climate seems suitable for Sabal palmetto, so it is not a huge shock that they can grow there, it is more of a shock that they actually are grown there and that there are some big specimens, quite a few! I am not sure if they were transplanted or planted as young specimens, but they certainly are large and healthy-looking, and the same goes for the Trachys. Let me know what you think and/or if you know of any other Sabal palmettto or Trachys in southern Oklahoma. Thanks!

 

PalmsUSA

Choctaw Casino Durant, OK:

Choctaw Casino Grant, OK:

That was a fun discovery. Southern Oklahoma is one of the few parts of the state where mature Sabal palmetto can sometimes do well, especially in sheltered urban locations with good drainage and a bit of extra warmth from buildings. The casinos also have the budget to replace any losses, so they're more willing to experiment with large landscape specimens than most homeowners.

The Trachycarpus doesn't surprise me at all since they're generally more cold-tolerant. The Sabal palmetto is definitely the more interesting one. I'd be curious to know how they looked after some of the colder winters we've had since this thread was posted, as that would say a lot about their long-term hardiness in that area.