Bottle Palm Help - Islamorada

[LeeJ]

Looking for help with my Bottle Palms in Islamorada.

Haven't posted before. Thought getting the pictures posted might be the first step.

Here goes. Any ideas?

 

[LeeJ]

Does anyone recognize the brown spots and the leaf weakness?

 

[Looking Glass]

These look like they are really getting beat up by the conditions.   What’s the history of these palms?  Are they new to you?   What’s the irrigation schedule and fertilizing schedule like?  

[happypalms]

Phytophthora or possibly fusarium or crown rot caused by pestalotiopsis palmarum but it doesn’t look good. Over fertilised palms generally don’t look like that. 

[LeeJ]

They are 2 years old to me at this location. Fertlizer a little every 45 days during the spring and summer.

Water by rain except for spring and summer when it may get really dry. Islamorada Location. Bright sun all day most days.

Insecticide, Sevin 1 app, Imidacloprid, 1 app, Avid 0.15 I app., working on mealy bugs on the smaller palm and other plants on the property

Fungicide, Liquid Copper 6 appl, Daconil 2 appl., Phyton 2 app., Hydrogen Perioxide 6 appl,

Possible suggestion of working on a Anthracnose fungus, may use Azoxystrobin for symptons

Thanks for your help

[Looking Glass]

53 minutes ago, LeeJ said:

They are 2 years old to me at this location. Fertlizer a little every 45 days during the spring and summer.

Water by rain except for spring and summer when it may get really dry. Islamorada Location. Bright sun all day most days.

Insecticide, Sevin 1 app, Imidacloprid, 1 app, Avid 0.15 I app., working on mealy bugs on the smaller palm and other plants on the property

Fungicide, Liquid Copper 6 appl, Daconil 2 appl., Phyton 2 app., Hydrogen Perioxide 6 appl,

Possible suggestion of working on a Anthracnose fungus, may use Azoxystrobin for symptons

Thanks for your help

[Looking Glass]

1 hour ago, LeeJ said:

They are 2 years old to me at this location. Fertlizer a little every 45 days during the spring and summer.

Water by rain except for spring and summer when it may get really dry. Islamorada Location. Bright sun all day most days.

Insecticide, Sevin 1 app, Imidacloprid, 1 app, Avid 0.15 I app., working on mealy bugs on the smaller palm and other plants on the property

Fungicide, Liquid Copper 6 appl, Daconil 2 appl., Phyton 2 app., Hydrogen Perioxide 6 appl,

Possible suggestion of working on a Anthracnose fungus, may use Azoxystrobin for symptons

Thanks for your help

oops above.   

You are in Ag Zone 11b, so there really is no spring/summer per se (though we still use these markers as descriptors) You’ve got a warm season and a hot season that is wetter.   Still, islamorada is very hot, sunny and dry most times of the year, with very poor sandy soil.   The growing season is year round, perhaps more so for these when peak heat and dryness wanes.  

These palms look like they are cooking out in the open, to me.   You might want to try mulching that square, watering aggressively every few days, and fertilizing 4x per year with a high end palm fertilizer.   That sand and rock won’t hold water for 12 hours in this heat  

Sometimes a bottle will get crown rot and croak in South Florida, but overall they do well.  They aren’t particularly drought tolerant though, just average.  All three browning at once though?  I don’t think it’s fungal.   

[Rubberboots]

@LeeJ thick mulch it...put an umbrella over it afternoon 🤔

[LeeJ]

Thanks for the insight,  not available for such everyday personal care.

Thinking it is something attacking the stem of the palm leaf after the leave develops as shown in the dark lesions on picture 3.

Still looking for a solution to counteract the decay of the palm stem after leaf development.

Thanks for your suggestion. Lee

[SeanK]

Seems the new leaves are underdeveloped yet there isn't so much burn on the older ones. Almost seems like an infection of sorts.

[Looking Glass]

39 minutes ago, LeeJ said:

Thanks for the insight,  not available for such everyday personal care.

Thinking it is something attacking the stem of the palm leaf after the leave develops as shown in the dark lesions on picture 3.

Still looking for a solution to counteract the decay of the palm stem after leaf development.

Thanks for your suggestion. Lee

I was curious if the palm was “new to you”, in the original reply,  as it looked by the picture like a mature triple that was doing well in the past, and is recently not doing well.   Any idea if the previous owners had irrigation on the palm or did frequent hand watering?  If you could reactivate their old irrigation line or add one, that may help on remote control.  Adding the wood mulch would help hold moisture and nutrients, could be done in 10 minutes after a quick trip to the store, or by landscapers with a phone call.  Without water and nutrients that travel up with it reaching the leaves consistently, it’s going down I think.  It won’t have the power to grow through rot or sun damage.  I assume you’re away a lot.  Maybe the late August and September storms will help.   

Looking at what you’ve tried, you’ve shotgun-hit everything twice over.   But even if there is another cause, the palm will have to grow out of it.  Still, lack of water could be the cause of that browning.   

Maybe post some clear pics of the damage close up and from various angles, especially any holes or ulcers, for more detail.   

I had one Bottle in all day full sun grow well for a few years, then got some sort of crown rot over 2 years, that I removed.  Others in the backyard were fine.   All treatments failed over time.   Like many palms, mine didn’t know it had died for a very long time.  Sat there for many months after the spear pulled.   

If you do have to replace it, consider replacing with a native or Cuban/Carribean palm species that might handle things better….
 

 

 

[LeeJ]

Yes, the older leaves seem to be less affected. I agree with some kind of infection.

The other observation is that when the leaves develop the long side seems to develop ok for a while and then the weakness seems to come closer to the crown and then gets weaker on the base stem, as shown in the pictures. until the leaf collapses and falls.

Another observation is that the base of the leaf tends to separate right away from the base instead of holding on long after the leaf dies away.

On each group one started to turn to this issue, now all three seem to show some of the same symptoms

In case any of this makes sense. Thanks. Lee