Foxtail Palm dying?

[LICountryGirl]

My Foxtail Palm has given me problems for almost a year but this is how bad it's gotten. It was planted as part of the landscape package with the house and we use palm fertilizer and there is a sprinkler head not 2 feet from it. Is it beyond saving? The fertilizer we use is called Perfect Palm.

[Johnny Palmseed]

Sometimes palms just don’t take the transplant well. I assume that you bought a new house and this was installed by the builders crew. If so, is there any warranty? What kind of sprinkler is near the palm and is it spraying directly on the palm? How much water is it getting? It could be not enough or too much.  The outcome can look similar. Also, how much fertilizer did you use? Typically, you should wait for a while after planting to let the palm get established. 

[LICountryGirl]

Thank you for your response. We moved in approx 9 months after the house was finished with the landscaping. The sprinkler by the tree is a regular lawn head that doesn't hit the tree directly.  We water 2x weekly for 45 mins. We have been fertilizing every 6 weeks according to the palm fertilizer instructions. Any insight?

[Merlyn]

@LICountryGirl a photo of the whole palm could help.  A couple of thoughts:

• Micco is far enough South that it would not have been cold damage from last winter.  Last winter was pretty mild anyway, so I'm sure that isn't it.
• It looks like the old fronds are dying off much faster than normal, but the new spear is pretty solid green.  Is that correct?  If the new spear is clean, then that means it's probably struggling with root or trunk issues.  
• Is it planted up next to the house, maybe downhill from a gutter drain or something?  Some palms love tons of water, some don't.  I have a Beccariophoenix Alfredii that's about 6-8 feet directly downhill from a gutter, and it is growing a LOT faster than ones out in the yard.
• How much of the 13-5-13 are you giving it?  Generally the recommendation for *established* palms is 1.5lb of 8-2-12 for every 100sqft of canopy.  For a new palm usually you don't fertilize (or minimal amounts) in the first 3-5 months, to avoid burning new roots.  For something that size I'd think maybe 1/2 or 1 handful sprinkled in a 6-8 foot diameter circle around the trunk.

[LICountryGirl]

Thank you! I will take a better picture and post later when I get home and give more details as requested.. all that brown/black is not disease?

[Merlyn]

1 hour ago, LICountryGirl said:

Thank you! I will take a better picture and post later when I get home and give more details as requested.. all that brown/black is not disease?

It could be a fungal or bacterial disease, and it also could be the result of something like root rot.  For example, if the roots are sitting in wet sludge then the might only be able to draw up a limited amount of water and nutrients.  If that happens the fronds might die off really early, just because the palm can't support more than 1 or 2 at a time. 

I'd also check the condition of the trunk for any sign of softness.  I had several small Foxtails die on me after a 27-28F heavy frost cold front.  They looked ok until around May or June, and then the tops just fell off.  The insides had been rotted away to black/brown stringy fibers and you could easily crush the trunk with an average squeeze by hand.

[LICountryGirl]

So the trunk feels pretty solid except in the middle, it feels like the outer bark gives a bit. The soil is damp, I dug around a bit. Maybe it's getting too much water. So frustrating. Here's some more pictures 

[aztropic]

[TropicsEnjoyer]

I can’t say what exactly but it doesn’t look very hopeful. In my experience foxtails don’t take cold damage very well and if the trunk is seemingly rotting by what you say and what the pictures show then you might have a lost cause. 

[Harry’s Palms]

They like a warm climate with fast draining soil . I have observed a lot of failures with Wodyetia , including my own . Yours looks like it is done . One of mine made it for ten years , looked beautiful , and within a year and a half showed symptoms like the one in the photos only a much larger palm . I tried everything to save it but it died …slowly. We have many in my area that are very robust but others end up not , even within the same yard! Harry

[happypalms]

Way to wet!

[LICountryGirl]

Thank you all. I love the way they look but boy are they finicky. Maybe it's time to just pull it out and plant something else.

 

[Merlyn]

3 hours ago, LICountryGirl said:

Thank you all. I love the way they look but boy are they finicky. Maybe it's time to just pull it out and plant something else.

Yeah, I think this one is already D-E-D.  The middle of the trunk should be consistently round, not sunken in like this:

Most likely the inside of that trunk area is brown stringy fibers, so the fronds are just sitting there not connected to the roots.  I had a Christmas Palm (Adonidia) do the same thing, this is what it looked like inside:

The most likely culprit is a fungus called Thielaviopsis.  It destroys the upper trunk and not curable.  It's a fungus floating around in the air all the time, and frequently infects palms through either contaminated pruning tools (not cleaning between palms) or in cuts in fresh tissue.  Cleaning loppers with rubbing alcohol between palms is a good idea.  It's also a reason why people here say to try not to cut green tissue.  On my Foxtails I just let the fronds drop off naturally once they are fully brown and dessicated.

The good news is that the lower trunk looks solid, and Thielaviopsis does not stay soil-resident for decades like some other diseases (Ganoderma).  So if you remove that one and try to get it all out of there without spreading the fungus around, you could possibly plant another palm in the same spot or nearby with low risk of contamination.  I'd take a shovel and chop down around the bottom of the trunk and take the whole thing out in 1 piece.  Then cut it up elsewhere for recycling pickup.

Foxtails should be reliably cold hardy in that area.  They are a bit finicky when young, but solid once they start getting some trunk.  I have a single and a triple that are about 3 feet downhill from a major roof downspout, and don't seem to mind getting utterly flooded on a daily basis.  But they aren't in a "low spot," so the roots probably don't sit in muck.  If the ground keeps sloping down away from the bed, and it's not super dense mucky soil there, then most palms would do ok in that spot.