Sabal Palms in Fuquay-Varina, NC

[Cevven]

I currently reside here in Raleigh (Garner to be exact), however I travel to Fuquay-Varina quite often for work and last year I took some pics of a few palms planted a newly built apartment complex (The Retreat at Fuquay-Varina) behind the Wal-Mar there.  I was fairly taken back because public plantings of palms (outside of Windmill palms and maybe needle) are not common here - most apartment and condo complexes in the area seem to prefer deciduous trees (and sometimes evergreen Magnolia trees) for landscaping. This is the only apartment complex like I this that I personally seen in the area that have planted trunking Sabals. 

Edited March 20, 2022 by Cevven

[knikfar]

Beautiful photos! I'm in Raleigh, about a mile outside of 440, just off Capital Blvd. You're correct that commercial properties don't really plant palmettos around here. But I hope more of them start doing it. Palmettos are a lot hardier than many people think. And we have sabal birminghams here in Raleigh that have been growing completely unprotected for over 40 years. There's one large sabal palmetto on Capital Blvd, southbound just as Capital and Louisburg Rd come together. I think it was planted after the 2018 cold event but its been doing well, unprotected, ever since. I know there are others around town but you really have to look for them. I have seven growing in my yard but I planted all of them this year. 

[PalmatierMeg]

Great creative landscaping! Hope developers in NC do more of it. Sabals don't drop mountains of dead leaves every fall. They are evergreen

[WSimpson]

That is a nice planting there . Keep us posted on the success of those over the years .

I checked the location of that town , so it's just a little southwest of Raleigh . 

Will

[knikfar]

18 hours ago, Will Simpson said:

That is a nice planting there . Keep us posted on the success of those over the years .

I checked the location of that town , so it's just a little southwest of Raleigh . 

Will

Yep. It's a Raleigh suburb. It's also where the only locally known large butia grows. And that survived 2018 with no protection at all. 

[Cevven]

On 3/21/2022 at 10:09 AM, knikfar said:

Beautiful photos! I'm in Raleigh, about a mile outside of 440, just off Capital Blvd. You're correct that commercial properties don't really plant palmettos around here. But I hope more of them start doing it. Palmettos are a lot hardier than many people think. And we have sabal birminghams here in Raleigh that have been growing completely unprotected for over 40 years. There's one large sabal palmetto on Capital Blvd, southbound just as Capital and Louisburg Rd come together. I think it was planted after the 2018 cold event but its been doing well, unprotected, ever since. I know there are others around town but you really have to look for them. I have seven growing in my yard but I planted all of them this year. 

Yeah, I seen the palmettoes you are talking. They have a few on this commercial property off of Glenwood Ave. heading towards Brier Creek and Frankie's Fun Park. Sabal palmettos, especially the hardy ones like Bald Head Island and Tifton Hardy, can easily grow here.  I think the Puerto Rican Hat Palm (a tropical species of Sabal Palmetto) may even be hardy here in the Raleigh area, especially east and south of Raleigh (I read it was hardy down to 8A at least). There are palmetto trees I posted photos of here a while back that had the "smooth" trunks and look like they could be from SC in Johnston County (heading towards Benson, NC). There used to be 4 on the property but it's down to 2, one was struck by lightning and I guess the other one randomly removed for some reason. 

I feel that a lot of people find palms to be out of place here in Raleigh and you may not see it be ubiquitous here like may see in the coastal Carolinas. You do see quite a few Trachy Fortunei and Chusan around but they are planted in a more scattered ornamental fashion in people's yards and businesses rather than it planted around ubiquitously. 

[Cevven]

On 3/22/2022 at 1:27 PM, PalmatierMeg said:

Great creative landscaping! Hope developers in NC do more of it. Sabals don't drop mountains of dead leaves every fall. They are evergreen

Yeah, I was honestly shocked to see them planted there. If you do see Sabal palmettos, it's usually like one in someone's yard and maybe at a couple of businesses. While we are not in the exact native range of Sabal Minor (some people I have said may have extended further inland that what's classically taught, however), it's native to the same southern yellow pine (i.e. Longleaf, Slash. Loblolly) ecosystem (as well as the broadleaf evergreen ecosystem along the coast) we have in NC - so we can naturalize it here easily. 

[Cevven]

On 3/22/2022 at 4:25 PM, Will Simpson said:

That is a nice planting there . Keep us posted on the success of those over the years .

I checked the location of that town , so it's just a little southwest of Raleigh . 

Will

Yup.  Fuquay-Varina is a solid zone 8A and for a small city or suburb, does have some UHI in some areas (8B microclimates). On the official 2012 USDA hardiness zone map, it's zone 7B but when you go the USDA GIS viewer, based on 1980-2009 data, it's zone 8A. Fuquay Varina is below the fall line, so it's bit warmer than places north in the Triangle, which is mostly in the piedmont. I reside in Garner, so it's usually about 1 to 2 degrees warmer in Fuquay-Varina but cooler once you go to Duncan from Fuquay-Varina (off Highway 42) heading towards Chatham and Lee Counties due to more radiational cooling for it being more rural and higher elevation. 

[WSimpson]

On 3/23/2022 at 11:12 AM, knikfar said:

Yep. It's a Raleigh suburb. It's also where the only locally known large butia grows. And that survived 2018 with no protection at all. 

I see you haven't posted that much yet so I wanted to post my Butia here in Winston-Salem  in case you haven't seen it

 . 

 

[WSimpson]

I would like to mention that  in 2018 ,  I had here in Winston-Salem , 8 days below 32F , and I lost my beloved 2 HC palmettos ( that I could've easily protected the trunk , but I didn't because Palmettos are hardy to 7F , but evidently can't handle 7F and then a High of 26F type of weather ) that were flowering and trunking . Gary Hollar said it was a 100 year kind of cold , I guess somewhat like Texas had , but at least we didn't have any precipitation . 

So they should be good to go for a long time , but that historic crap can happen without notice . My Tifton Hardy Palmetto survived that 2018 cold spell  , and I have another HC Palmetto that is happy . 

All my Trachys survived fine .

Will

Edited March 26, 2022 by Will Simpson

[Cevven]

10 hours ago, Will Simpson said:

I would like to mention that  in 2018 ,  I had here in Winston-Salem , 8 days below 32F , and I lost my beloved 2 HC palmettos ( that I could've easily protected the trunk , but I didn't because Palmettos are hardy to 7F , but evidently can't handle 7F and then a High of 26F type of weather ) that were flowering and trunking . Gary Hollar said it was a 100 year kind of cold , I guess somewhat like Texas had , but at least we didn't have any precipitation . 

So they should be good to go for a long time , but that historic crap can happen without notice . My Tifton Hardy Palmetto survived that 2018 cold spell  , and I have another HC Palmetto that is happy . 

All my Trachys survived fine .

Will

Yeah, we had around 160 hours below freezing here in Raleigh in 2018. My friend told me around Zebulon, some young palmettos died. I do have some pics I may post later of a few palmettos in the area that survived the 2014, 2015, and 2018 polar vortex we had. 

[Cevven]

12 hours ago, Will Simpson said:

I see you haven't posted that much yet so I wanted to post my Butia here in Winston-Salem  in case you haven't seen it

 . 

 

Wow, that's a good size Butia, I would say Winston Salem is zone 8A, especially in the UHI. Greensboro is a solid 8A and pretty much can grow anything Raleigh (Greensboro record low is one degree cooler than Raleigh's record low)

[knikfar]

On 3/26/2022 at 3:15 AM, Cevven said:

Yup.  Fuquay-Varina is a solid zone 8A and for a small city or suburb, does have some UHI in some areas (8B microclimates). On the official 2012 USDA hardiness zone map, it's zone 7B but when you go the USDA GIS viewer, based on 1980-2009 data, it's zone 8A. Fuquay Varina is below the fall line, so it's bit warmer than places north in the Triangle, which is mostly in the piedmont. I reside in Garner, so it's usually about 1 to 2 degrees warmer in Fuquay-Varina but cooler once you go to Duncan from Fuquay-Varina (off Highway 42) heading towards Chatham and Lee Counties due to more radiational cooling for it being more rural and higher elevation. 

Do you happen to have a link to the USDA GIS Viewer? I'm trying to find it on their site but not having any luck. 

[Cevven]

11 hours ago, knikfar said:

Do you happen to have a link to the USDA GIS Viewer? I'm trying to find it on their site but not having any luck. 

https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=611d3e5ac1774a21a6ff55aceb8f588c

[knikfar]

9 hours ago, Cevven said:

https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=611d3e5ac1774a21a6ff55aceb8f588c

Thank you. I love this map because it says I'm in zone 8 now. But I'm not sure I trust it since I can't identify the source. This isn't from USDA. 

[Cevven]

2 hours ago, knikfar said:

Thank you. I love this map because it says I'm in zone 8 now. But I'm not sure I trust it since I can't identify the source. This isn't from USDA. 

 

https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/topic/shifts-growing-degree-days-plant-hardiness-zones-and-heat-zones

That's the site where I got the map from, you go to where it says "storymap can accessed here" and click on the word 'here'. Once you do that, you go to the site and click on what map you want, and in the description, look for "Maps of other time periods and emissions scenarios are available here." and click on the word "here" - and you get the GIS map.  I believe it was the US Forest Service who did the maps and article, the USDA is just hosting it. I doubt USDA is going to update their official map anytime soon. As I said before, I personally prefer the Arbor Day Foundation hardiness zone map but for legal, academic, and business purposes, it seems to the most lawful to accept and use (whether we like it or not) the current 2012 map.