Longevity of palms

[TikiRick]

The entrance to my neighborhood must have been established around 1955 as the main street was planted out with rows of Roystoneas. They are extremely tall for Royals, but in the past 3 months, two have faded and the heads have withered to nothing. The entire tops eventually fell off.

Watching these apparently healthy, yet old Royals die....do palms have a life expectancy given that everything else is healthy, wealthy, and wise???

No lightning, no chemicals on the roots, no nutritional deficiencies, nothing....just age?

[Dave-Vero]

I suspect the proximate cause was disease.

But palms inherently have finite lives, more so than some conifers or dicot trees that can carry on more or less indefinitely (coast redwoods might last until the climate changes).  The primary reason would be the vascular system.  If I remember correctly (Barry Tomlinson would be an expert), the food-carrying elements (phloem) have to live the life of the tree--so you may end up with 150-year-old cells.  In a coast redwood, no living cell would be that old--the phloem tissues (inner bark) are always being renewed by the vascular cambium, the sheath of dividing cells that produce new wood (xylem) and inner bark (phloem).

Some palms are more or less programmed to self-destruct.   A few (like Corypha) grow to full size, build up big stocks of food in the stem, then spend every bit of their resources on one big burst of reproduction.  It's sort of suicidal, but it's proven an effective reproductive strategy for lots of plants, ranging from annuals to agaves (century plants).   Many palms start life as understory species, grow tall, then put their efforts into reproduction.  I suspect that many of these species eventually exhaust themselves.

[xerophyte_nyc]

depending on their physiology, some plants when too tall are no longer able to transport food and water high up into the leaves

[alex_7b]

What a difference between Chameadora and Jubaea!

It's like between a Weeping Willow and a Live Oak.

[bgl]

Rick,

I started a thread last year asking this same question. Can't find that thread, though. There were no conclusive answers. However, regarding Roystoneas: when we had the IPS Biennial in New Caledonia in 2000 we had dinner one evening next to a large grove of 150 ft tall Roystoneas. According to the New Caledonians, these palms had been brought by a Frenchman from Reunion in the early 1860s and planted in New Caledonia. So when we saw them, they were close to 140 years of age. And appeared quite healthy.

Bo-Göran

[PalmGuyWC]

It's difficult to gage the age of a palm, since they have no growth rings, such as a conifer or a decidious tree.  I suspect most fast growing palms, such as Syagrus, don't live to long. (Maybe less than 50 or 60 yrs.)?  I think most of them fail when they get old and weaker to some sort of a disease, or perhaps mechanical damage....such as a freeze, which makes them succeptable to fungus or bacteria. Also in thunderstorm prone areas the very tall palms often get struck by lightening.

Many tropical palms may have a limited life span, but the ones that produce suckers could live a long time as the old trunks die out and new suckers are produced.

Some of the cold hardy palms could live a long time, such as Butia and Jubaea. I read in one of the threads that Jubaea could live to be 12 hundred years old, and that's old for any plant.

It would seem that plants that are grown under stress can live for a long time.  The Bristlecone pine can live for centurys, but they grow in a very inhospitable climate, enduring heat, bitter cold, and drought from time to time.

Serenoa is a plam that can live for centurys as its trunk (rhizome) creeps along or near the surface of the ground.  Since it creeps, it doesn't have to fight gravity to get the nutrients to the crown as it gets older and occassionaly the rhizome will grow new buds, another way of self preservation..

Cultivated palms may not live as long as the ones growing in habitat, where they have to struggle from time to time, from drought, or fire, but they are adapted to those conditions, and they grow very slowly and have "hard" growth. We pamper our cultivated palms with ample water and fertilizer, etc, so they grow faster and perhaps have weaker growth.

The cold hardy palms tend to have thicker woody trunks which would protect them more from cold and also have a reserve of nutrients and moisture in the trunks. (Ie, Jubaea, Butia, some Braheas, Sabals Washingtonias). I also would think these palms have extensive root systems that grow very deep and reach ground water.

All of the above is supposition, not hard facts.

Dick

[sonoranfans]

I remember reading about butia capitata having a lifespan of 80 years, not very long for a tree.  But really, many palms are not grown in native habitat, so life expectancy may be shorter than in native habitat.

[palmmermaid]

(PalmGuyWC @ Jul. 30 2007,15:23)

QUOTE

Serenoa is a plam that can live for centurys as its trunk (rhizome) creeps along or near the surface of the ground.  Since it creeps, it doesn't have to fight gravity to get the nutrients to the crown as it gets older and occassionaly the rhizome will grow new buds, another way of self preservation..

ll of the above is supposition, not hard facts.

Actually, Serenoa repens clones live so long that carbon dating must be used to age them.  One clone has been dated to be 1500 years old!

I was recently reading a book on Rhapis excelsa that indicated the Japanese have some plants that are 350 years old.

And the dates that were once grown in Israel lived at least 100 years.

[Ken Johnson]

Maybe we can get Barry Tomlinson to give us some info, he has done lots of work on physiology.

Also Cannary Carlo has some notes on known ages. And an article in Principies.

Rick,

I bet it was lightening. Royals can live 100's of years and reach more that 200'.

[amazondk]

There are Roystoneas at the Rio de Janeiro botanical gardens that date back to the mid 1800s.  There are real tall trees by now.  And, they still look pretty healthy.  I have recently noticed some Mauritias that tower above the others, which are already tall trees.  I have no way of knowing, but they must be pretty old.

dk

[DoomsDave]

This is a great topic and there are no conclusive answers.

In Florida, palms croak from lightning strike, or disease.

Here in Cali, they get so tall (washies) that the vascular tissues can't carry the water and nutes to the leaves, sort of a slow heart attack (liquid can't get where it's gotta go . . . )

Hmm.  Which might explain why Ceroxies rock in the Andies.   No lightning, no disease . . .  (I don't think)

This is one of those questions you can't really answer, as Bo's response has indicated.

dave

[tanetahi]

Pigafetta, Metroxylon and Caryota fit the bill of being shortlived fast-growing species whose lives are normally over in a matter of decades. I know essentially nothing of the ecology of these genera in the wild; I wonder if anyone knows if they most characteristically grow in disturbed / regenerating / secondary forest, as opposed to old, climax forest.

Some of the long-lived ones, as others have pointed out above, will be those that grow in comparatively dry and harsh climates, like the date palms and Jubaeas, Livistona in inland Australia, Washingtonia in Arizona, while others will be rainforest understorey palms like Orania appendiculata, that lead an extremely slow- moving life in the dense shade of tropical evergreen forests, and live for several hundred years.

As with treeferns, as palms get taller and older, their fronds get smaller and upward growth of the stem becomes slower, perhaps as a result of progressive loss of vascular function in the trunk. Consequent physiological weakening would make them susceptible to disease.

[palmazon]

Principes published an article maybe a dozen years ago - Phytelephas seemannii: A Potentially Immortal Palm. It creeps along the forest floor, with the crown growing upright until it becomes top-heavy, then it tips over and begins the cycle anew.

[MattyB]

Sounds like my drunk cousin Sal.

[Jono Miller]

Kitty:

You seem to have done some digging regarding palm life span. I'm trying to figure out how long our native cabbage palms can live. If you have any thoughts I'd be interested.

(I'll be posting a separate query about this.)

And If you have a citation or reference for the Serenoa life span, that would be helpful too.

Jono Miller