How to differentiate Chamaedorea

[Keys6505]

Can anyone point me to a guide or post that tells how to differentiate between Chamaedorea species, specifically Cataractum, Siefrizii, and Radicalis?

[OC2Texaspalmlvr]

I have all 3 palms in the ground in my yard. Plus the Chamaedoreas palm book to boot. My guess is your trying to differentiate between species as seedlings ? 

T J 

[Keys6505]

On 9/24/2022 at 9:37 PM, OC2Texaspalmlvr said:

I have all 3 palms in the ground in my yard. Plus the Chamaedoreas palm book to boot. My guess is your trying to differentiate between species as seedlings ? 

T J 

I'm really late on this lol.  Actually I'm trying to figure out how to differentiate between semi-mature plants.  I run into vaguely labeled Chamadorea in nurseries in my travels but I never know what traits to look for to see if I have it or not.  I'm pretty sure I have Cataractum, Radicalis, and Elegans but that's only because the tags told me so.  If somebody wanted to know how to tell Washies apart I could rattle off a list of differences, I'm looking for that list for Chamadorea.

[SeanK]

Only thing I can say is that radicalis is hard to come by, so to confirm it you'd need a reliable source.

[Fusca]

On 9/23/2022 at 5:59 PM, Keys6505 said:

Can anyone point me to a guide or post that tells how to differentiate between Chamaedorea species, specifically Cataractum, Siefrizii, and Radicalis?

Dr. Hodel has a couple of publications on Chamaedorea but I'm not familiar with them.  One thing that I can tell you is cataractarum and seifrizii are clustering while radicalis is solitary.  Seifrizii canes resemble  bamboo canes and infructescences (fruit stalks) are bright orange.  Radicalis fruits are red/orange when ripe, seifrizii are purple/black and cataractarum are bluish.  

Edited October 10, 2022 by Fusca

[knikfar]

2 hours ago, SeanK said:

Only thing I can say is that radicalis is hard to come by, so to confirm it you'd need a reliable source.

It sure is hard to come by. I ordered seeds this past spring, planted them in seed starting mix and have kept them moist. No growth at all. I just wish I could find an actual plant to purchase. 

[SeanK]

47 minutes ago, knikfar said:

It sure is hard to come by. I ordered seeds this past spring, planted them in seed starting mix and have kept them moist. No growth at all. I just wish I could find an actual plant to purchase. 

I lost a bid on eBay last month. Nothing there or on Etsy. THE source is Phil Berman at 

junglemusic.net

out in California.

 

 

 

 

[Keys6505]

These are some of what I have.  The first one was labeled Cataractum, the seeds on it aren't ripe yet but previous crops I believe were black when ripe.

The singular plant in front of the fence was id'd on here as Radicalis a year or 2 back.  It didn't like when I relocated it hence the wonky leaves.

The last one is the Elegans which I'm pretty confident on.

So when I see ones labeled as "Bamboo Palm", that could be either Cat or Seifrizii, correct?  Any identifiers other than the clumping habit?

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by Keys6505

[Fusca]

1 hour ago, Keys6505 said:

These are some of what I have.  The first one was labeled Cataractum, the seeds on it aren't ripe yet but previous crops I believe were black when ripe.

The singular plant in front of the fence was id'd on here as Radicalis a year or 2 back.  It didn't like when I relocated it hence the wonky leaves.

The last one is the Elegans which I'm pretty confident on.

So when I see ones labeled as "Bamboo Palm", that could be either Cat or Seifrizii, correct?  Any identifiers other than the clumping habit?

I've not seen cataractarum referred to as "Bamboo Palm" but I have for seifrizii, microspadix and others.  Both of these cluster but seifrizii's leaflets are thinner than cataractarum or microspadix.  Your first one looks correct as cataractarum - its leaflets would be deeper green in more shade.  Just last week I bought a cataractarum that was labeled as "majesty palm"!  😄