Needle Palm

[GregVirginia7]

Moving right along…this Needle started out near a birdseed (squirrel) table…despite its protective needles, the critters nearly battered it to death, so I moved it to a nice, quiet spot under a big holly tree, though a very dry, shady spot, over the years, it has really responded…no protection at all except for the natural canopy of the holly tree and its south face…I highly recommend this palm for unprotected zone 7…over time, in a sunny spot, you can get a trunk as well…

 

 

[Alex High]

48 minutes ago, GregVirginia7 said:

Moving right along…this Needle started out near a birdseed (squirrel) table…despite its protective needles, the critters nearly battered it to death, so I moved it to a nice, quiet spot under a big holly tree, though a very dry, shady spot, over the years, it has really responded…no protection at all except for the natural canopy of the holly tree and its south face…I highly recommend this palm for unprotected zone 7…over time, in a sunny spot, you can get a trunk as well…

 

 

Awesome, yours looks fantastic! I always love hearing from fellow D.C. area palm growers. Needle palms are definitely bulletproof here and do not need any protection, and there are quite a few big ones scattered around the city in people's yards and in gardens and public plantings, they are the most common palm in the area. I have dozens of videos of beautiful specimens in the area on my YouTube channel, Palm Planet, and just planted one of my own in my backyard. Here are some pictures of mine of the most famous needle palm in the area and quite possibly the largest. It was supposedly planted in 1968 and is located in the Asian Valley area of the National Arboretum. It is well over 10 feet tall and even wider and has experienced many deep freezes including the January 1982 freeze where it dropped to -5 Fahrenheit, and never receives protection. Definitely the ideal palm for colder temperate climates.

[BeyondTheGarden]

Goodness @Alex High those are beautiful!   @GregVirginia7 those are looking good!  Certainly bigger and better than mine.  Rhapidophyllum is a great functional palm.  They have a very full, architectural  look when they get big.  I think a lot of people write them off them because they're too cold hardy and not "exotic" enough.   I just wish they weren't so hard to come by. 

[GregVirginia7]

23 hours ago, Jesse PNW said:

Goodness @Alex High those are beautiful!   @GregVirginia7 those are looking good!  Certainly bigger and better than mine.  Rhapidophyllum is a great functional palm.  They have a very full, architectural  look when they get big.  I think a lot of people write them off them because they're too cold hardy and not "exotic" enough.   I just wish they weren't so hard to come by. 

I have two…the naturally protected shady one that gets pretty dry and a more sunny one that gets lots of rain runoff…the sunny one is way larger and has some pretty nice trunks. I’m with you on the perception…we all want trunking palms but zone 7 mid-Atlantic growers are very limited in that regard so if I can get my sunny one big enough, I may trim out a trunk profile…just not too much of a trim, only enough to show the trunk…and any palm that can get smashed to the ground by freezing rain or wet snow and bounce back as soon as things thaw out, we’ll, that’s the very definition of a cold hardy palm and for my climate, the perfect choice…😊

[WSimpson]

Mine is getting fairly large and I too want to trim on the suckers and see what kind of trunk is under all mine's  foliage . Maybe there's a fairly fat trunk under there ?

Those in Washington  DC are beauties . Nice one in Virginia too that's coming along nicely .

Will

Edited September 27, 2022 by Will Simpson

[BeyondTheGarden]

1 hour ago, GregVirginia7 said:

we all want trunking palms...

Canopy palms are important for a complete picture, but I've come to believe that understory palms are more critical in creating effect.  I keep finding myself saying, "a wall of fronds", and "fronds, in your face", when I describe the way I want my jungle to look.  

Here is a picture I took in Universal Orlando's Jurassic Park.  The way that the fronds seal in every path, you really feel like a velociraptor could be hiding anywhere in there.  I read an article on the landscape and the designer said he wanted the foliage "to have teeth", and that's how you feel when you've got a face full of fronds.  You could achieve virtually this same effect with Needles, Sabal minor,  and cold hardy Chamaedoreas (those are pushing it for zone 7 but are so small they're among the easiest of palms to protect).  

In fact I think Needles look quite similar in effect to large hedges of Rhapis.