Acrocomia totai

[thyerr01]

I was in Orlando this week for work and took Fri-Sat to ride the velocicoaster and make the drive to Dade City and Lake Alfred to see the Acrocomia totai.

Dade City - I saw maybe 10 trees in eight different locations around town. All looked pretty healthy. Only a couple, the first and last, really have any spines on the trunks. 1, 2 and 5 grow on the side of the road and are publicly accessible, but I didnt see any seed.

 

Edited November 11 by thyerr01

[thyerr01]

Lake Alfred - These were at the Mackay Gardens & Lakeside Preserve. Definitely a better place to see them, with maybe 15-20 specimens all easily accessible. A few were dead and some were dying, seemingly from Ganodema - they had large conks at the base. There was a lot of old seed here, mostly with holes. After some searching I was able to gather 7 seeds without holes which seem rock solid. All float, not sure if this is normal for these? They are meant to remain viable for a while. Several of the palms had visible flowers, but I couldn't tell if they were old or new (see pic 3).

[Meangreen94z]

Very nice. Thank you. Im germinating totai seed. They took over a year to show life, as advertised.

[kinzyjr]

They take forever and the fruit smells like dish soap

[idontknowhatnametuse]

The seeds only float when they have remains of the pulp/fruit, I tried germinating 5 A. aculeata and one that had some pulp still floated, the other 4 sunk completely. Try removing all the remaining oil as well. I only have Acrocomia aculeata but I'm pretty sure Totai grows faster and is a bit hardier.

Also, did you see any seedlings around the palms?

[thyerr01]

The few seeds I found were completely dry and have no pulp/fruit left on the outside. I'll update once I cut them open later this week. I did find 1 or 2 fruits that had been partially eaten by something and had some remaining pulp, but the seeds were damaged. I saw perhaps 5-10 strap leaf seedlings at the Mackay Gardens location around the base of some of the A. totai, but there were several Queen palms and Sabals scattered around and they might have been from them. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures.

[Fusca]

@thyerr01, thanks for posting these pics.  I was in Orlando last week as well and hoped to see these palms but a rental car disaster limited me to only 2 days with a vehicle.