So I ordered 4 sylvester palms and today I used a plant identifier app to check them out further. According to the apps that I used my plants are indeed not sylvester palms but actually canary island date palms. I ordered the sylvester palms specifically because the website showed that they will grow well in my zone 8. I have looked into the canary island date palms and online some places are saying they only grow well in zone 9+. I have also heard some people on this forum saying that the CIDPs are actually even more cold hardy than the sylvesters. I am in Augusta, georgia on the border of south carolina and our winters don’t get too cold but it has indeed snowed here a few times within my lifetime. Will they be fine to make it through the winters here? I have 2 european fan palms that are thriving in this climate even through the winters with no additional protection as well which gives me more hope.

CIDP are more cold hardy than P.sylvestris. 

I wouldn't trust an app to be able to determine the difference between the two, especially at that size. I see no reason to doubt that they are Phoenix sylvestris at this stage. 

As far as cold hardiness, I think Augusta may be marginal for either. I know Canary Island Dates do well in far southern Georgia but I don't remember seeing too many very large ones in Savannah even. I think Phoenix sylvestris is usually considered less cold hardy than CIDP, certainly hasn't been planted in Georgia as often in the past.

There's lots of good debate and information on here for reference - cold hardiness is not always an easy thing to measure or quantify. 

 

20 minutes ago, aabell said:

I wouldn't trust an app to be able to determine the difference between the two, especially at that size. I see no reason to doubt that they are Phoenix sylvestris at this stage. 

As far as cold hardiness, I think Augusta may be marginal for either. I know Canary Island Dates do well in far southern Georgia but I don't remember seeing too many very large ones in Savannah even. I think Phoenix sylvestris is usually considered less cold hardy than CIDP, certainly hasn't been planted in Georgia as often in the past.

There's lots of good debate and information on here for reference - cold hardiness is not always an easy thing to measure or quantify. 

 

Thank you for your input, my growing zone is also the same as savannah GA. I also have yet to see any large date palms in georgia or really any size for that matter. Hopefully I can get lucky as they are planted in a place that gives them like 12 hours of sunlight every day during this time of year. The website I ordered from said they are fit for the same growing zone as my europeans which are thriving.

44 minutes ago, SeanK said:

CIDP are more cold hardy than P.sylvestris. 

Thank you Sean I see you helping people on here all the time we appreciate your feedback!

46 minutes ago, aabell said:

I wouldn't trust an app to be able to determine the difference between the two, especially at that size. I see no reason to doubt that they are Phoenix sylvestris at this stage. 

As far as cold hardiness, I think Augusta may be marginal for either. I know Canary Island Dates do well in far southern Georgia but I don't remember seeing too many very large ones in Savannah even. I think Phoenix sylvestris is usually considered less cold hardy than CIDP, certainly hasn't been planted in Georgia as often in the past.

There's lots of good debate and information on here for reference - cold hardiness is not always an easy thing to measure or quantify. 

 

also according to the comments on the thread you linked the CIDPs and sylvesters have been able to survive down to 5 degrees and freezing temperatures for a week at a time. That makes me very hopeful because most winters here don’t go below 30 degrees for more than a few days at most, and never staying in freezing temperatures for more than one morning time.

49 minutes ago, palmofmyhand said:

Thank you for your input, my growing zone is also the same as savannah GA. I also have yet to see any large date palms in georgia or really any size for that matter. Hopefully I can get lucky as they are planted in a place that gives them like 12 hours of sunlight every day during this time of year. The website I ordered from said they are fit for the same growing zone as my europeans which are thriving.

This thread has some good photos of very large date palms in Brunswick. 

Brunswick and Savannah are technically in the same zone (9A) but Brunswick is 80 miles further south and basically right on the coast instead of inland on a river - evidentially enough of a difference to support these CIDP through the big freeze events of the last few decades - Savannah doesn't have pre-1980s date palms that I'm aware of. 

Augusta is definitely another step colder from Savannah, both on the current map (8B vs 9A) and from the simple fact that it's farther north and way inland. Remember it's not the average winter you have to worry about - it's usually warm enough in the southeast to grow all kinds of things through the winter. It's those once every 10/20/40 year arctic cold fronts that can wipe the slate clean. Not trying to be pessimistic about your palms, just realistic. Have fun and you never know what can survive until you try it. 

13 minutes ago, aabell said:

This thread has some good photos of very large date palms in Brunswick. 

Brunswick and Savannah are technically in the same zone (9A) but Brunswick is 80 miles further south and basically right on the coast instead of inland on a river - evidentially enough of a difference to support these CIDP through the big freeze events of the last few decades - Savannah doesn't have pre-1980s date palms that I'm aware of. 

Augusta is definitely another step colder from Savannah, both on the current map (8B vs 9A) and from the simple fact that it's farther north and way inland. Remember it's not the average winter you have to worry about - it's usually warm enough in the southeast to grow all kinds of things through the winter. It's those once every 10/20/40 year arctic cold fronts that can wipe the slate clean. Not trying to be pessimistic about your palms, just realistic. Have fun and you never know what can survive until you try it. 

hey according to 2012 it could be considered the same growing zone as augusta technically there in chatham county at the botanical garden 🤪 wish me luck 🤞🏼 thanks for all the wonderful insights 

They look like P sylvestris to me. Definitely not P canariensis. Apps aren’t (yet) able to distinguish between similar palms. I’d guess the vast majority of species aren’t even loaded in to be a possible ID outcome. Maybe the day will come when we can use app, but it’s a while off. 

24 minutes ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

They look like P sylvestris to me. Definitely not P canariensis. Apps aren’t (yet) able to distinguish between similar palms. I’d guess the vast majority of species aren’t even loaded in to be a possible ID outcome. Maybe the day will come when we can use app, but it’s a while off. 

yea I was questioning it myself but the app showed sylvestris as a possible different ID result so I wasn’t sure thank you though.

I also see sylvestris, but it could also be a hybrid considering their tendency to cross breed with other phoenix.  I see obvious sylvestris hybrids all around my neighborhood and also some that appear to be visually all sylvestris.

1 hour ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

They look like P sylvestris to me. Definitely not P canariensis. Apps aren’t (yet) able to distinguish between similar palms. I’d guess the vast majority of species aren’t even loaded in to be a possible ID outcome. Maybe the day will come when we can use app, but it’s a while off. 

Agreed, too plumose for CIDP at that size.

I agree with NOT relying on a key to identify palms so young. May have to wait to be sure.

When folks say "Savannah", they might mean Tybee, downtown, or the fridgid Bamboo Gardens. I've not been in about 10 years but I'm sure that there are some CIDP in the downtown area. 

When folks mention "Atlanta", are they referring to Piedmont x Peachtree or one of the suburbs 15 miles out. The HDD rise at least 10%

Someone pulled over while I was mowing, and took a pic of this palm with their plant-IDing app, and said, “Nice Butia”…..

Love it!

On 6/11/2024 at 10:46 AM, Looking Glass said:

Someone pulled over while I was mowing, and took a pic of this palm with their plant-IDing app, and said, “Nice Butia”…..

that is a pretty bad classification error there.  Human visual pattern recognition is pretty good, especially in the ability to reject noise and recognize key differentiating features.  Simple differentiating features were missed by the AI.  Namely the crown shafted structure with ringed trunk, dark foliage, and white wax on the crownshaft.  A human could have used any one of these to disqualify the butia ID.   AI can be very powerful as a tool for many types of analysis.  But for high dimensional(rank) data structures the data needed to generalize the model is massive and most often under sampled.  When you train with too few samples, the generalization can be pretty poor. 

@Looking Glass how could it come up with that?  Clearly it's a Kerriodoxa Elegans!   

@palmofmyhand I'd agree with the others, most likely Sylvestris.  As Tom noted, Phoenix hybridize really often...so finding a pure Sylvestris or Dactylifera or CIDP is unusual.  An easy way to tell is that Sylvestris and Dactylifera have a lot of "plumosity" to the fronds.  That means that the leaflets are inserted at several different angles to the rachis/petiole.  In yours it looks like 4 angles are dominant, which is typical for Sylvestris.  CIDP tend to be two angles only, with leaflets arranged either in a completely flat plane (180 degrees from each other) or in a slight "V" shape.  Pure CIDP are rare, most that I've seen around here are part hybrids.

AI isn’t replacing us…. At least not for a little while. 

38 minutes ago, Merlyn said:

@Looking Glass how could it come up with that?  Clearly it's a Kerriodoxa Elegans!   

@palmofmyhand I'd agree with the others, most likely Sylvestris.  As Tom noted, Phoenix hybridize really often...so finding a pure Sylvestris or Dactylifera or CIDP is unusual.  An easy way to tell is that Sylvestris and Dactylifera have a lot of "plumosity" to the fronds.  That means that the leaflets are inserted at several different angles to the rachis/petiole.  In yours it looks like 4 angles are dominant, which is typical for Sylvestris.  CIDP tend to be two angles only, with leaflets arranged either in a completely flat plane (180 degrees from each other) or in a slight "V" shape.  Pure CIDP are rare, most that I've seen around here are part hybrids.

Thank you, you seem to be very knowledgeable and I appreciate it greatly.