I am trying to figure out how to prevent this inconsistency on trunk of Sylvester palms. At first I thought it was from not being continuously diamond cut, but you can't diamond cut boots that just fall off. at the top. Then I thought maybe it's just a combination of different environmental factors from farm to landscaped yard (irrigation, soil, height planted, Sun light, and fertilizer). However, after much research all this fuzz between the loose boots looks like chewed fibers from weevils. 

Then I believe, this tree died from Lethal bronzing seen in second picture. Does anyone else think something different? 

My theory is that the diamond cut made susceptible to Weevils and Weevils made susceptible to lethal bronzing.

Moral of the story, everytime you diamond cut you need do preventative treatment for pest.

 

 

Welcome to PalmTalk!  

Definitely Lethal Bronzing on the second photo. The I-4 corridor is ground zero for this plague.  A lot of us have just accepted that we may lose our crownshaft palms to cold at some point (ex.Roystonea regia, Wodyetia bifurcata, or Archontophoenix cunninghamiana), but we will probably have them a little longer than any of the large Phoenix species.

@Bowbair welcome to PalmTalk!  I'd agree with your assessment of Lethal Bronzing.  It's killed about half the Dactylifera and Sylvestris around my area of Orlando, with maybe another 25% showing visible signs of infection.  Theoretically it's main vector of transmission is infected bugs, a species of small flies (Haplaxius crudus) that live in the grass and fly up into the crown of the palms at night (I think).  Fuzz between the boots is pretty normal, and I haven't heard of weevils being a way for LB to get from palm to palm. 

The claim by botanists is that LB cannot be transmitted by dirty pruning tools like chainsaws, but as far as I can tell there has never been a study on LY or LB that actually proves no transmission.  Absent some scientific study proving or disproving, I'll continue to believe that pruning tools are a risk.  It's one of those "known unknowns" IMO.

In my area there was no LB until maybe 4 or 5 years ago.  The first ones I saw die were at an entrance to a subdivision.  They'd been in place for at least 10-15 years and then all died in a couple of months.  The Sabals next to them were unaffected.  I bike the area a lot, and it was just like LB popped up at random with no other infections visible for miles around.  The big spread of LB around here was when a new condo/apt complex was built.  They planted 8 tall Sylvestris, all with visible signs of LB.  Predictably they all died within a few months.  And then they replaced them with 8 more tall infected Sylvestris!  Not too long after that a bunch more nearby got infected and died, likely from Haplaxius crudus transmission.

One of mine caught suspected LB last spring, this was an early stage photo where I first noticed it:

Shortly after that the next rank of fronds quickly turned that odd red-brown color.  I ended up removing that Sylvestris and two others.