happypalms So you want a bit of tropical colour

[happypalms]

A great medium paced growing tree for shade or canopy is the diospyros digyna, and either the added bonus of fruit that taste a bit like chocolate mouse dessert. A tough tree tolerant of dry conditions and cool wet conditions. A must have for the permaculture garden or any ornamental garden. 

[happypalms]

A beautiful Australian plant the peroffskyana. Super tough yet will lap up any amount of attention and look twice as good. Drought tolerant heat tolerate cool tolerant and fire tolerant. Grows in full bright light to deep shade, and tolerant of a lot of sun. Native to my area and I love them, although a bit common around the place but very noticeable when seen. Easy to propagate and single plants will set viable seeds provided the weevil is present in the garden. They take about twelve months to germinate and like all cycas species have a seed ripening period after harvest. Such a wonderful plant to have in the garden but you need room. I will be planting more of them around the new garden. Just like I did 26 years ago. 

[gyuseppe]

Richard, there are two at the Botanical Garden in Naples, very large, they must be very old. This one is a very old dioon edule

 

[Urban Rainforest]

This is one a friend gave me as a little seedling. He germinated it off a cone from his big female plant. The thing is rootbound in a 15 gal. Now. The most user friendly Cycad I have as it has nothing that will poke you!

[gyuseppe]

https://pacsoa.org.au/wiki/index.php/Zamia_vazquezii

Z. vazquezii in Naples Botanic Garden

[happypalms]

3 hours ago, gyuseppe said:

Richard, there are two at the Botanical Garden in Naples, very large, they must be very old. This one is a very old dioon edule

 

Good pictures. One doesnt think of Naples with a such a beautiful collection. Great to see them growing strong. 

[happypalms]

3 hours ago, Urban Rainforest said:

This is one a friend gave me as a little seedling. He germinated it off a cone from his big female plant. The thing is rootbound in a 15 gal. Now. The most user friendly Cycad I have as it has nothing that will poke you!

They are very easy to work with. I know the feeling of a dried up bit of ferox leaf in amongst the leaf mulch they hurt. That’s a beautiful one you have there. 

[happypalms]

There some standout Australian trees that are must have if you have space to grow them. stenocarpus sinuatus Araucaria budwilliiAgatha robustaRandia fitzalaniiDavidsonia pruriens 

[happypalms]

Well that was a complete Sri spellcheck botch up. 

[happypalms]

A rather nice beaucarnea varietie this one, a lot thinner looking and with a flush of red in the young growth. Super tough as usual with this genus. A nice tough old plant to have in that hot sunny dry rocky part of the garden! 

[happypalms]

A nice Australian must have rainforest tree. They don’t germinate the fastest but are one fantastic shade tree when mature. This lot are destined for the garden in time. Sown on the 12/4/2025 there up there with palm seeds for speed of germination. 

[happypalms]

A nice old pandanus, 25 years old and set seeds for the first time this year. 

[happypalms]

I don’t know the name of this plant but it’s in the garden, pretty sure it was given to me. But to my surprise it has flowered and not a bad one at that. 

[mulungu]

Beautiful.  Never seen the flower before.  Looks like Stromanthe thalia 'Triostar."

[TropicsEnjoyer]

The flower is actually quite nice. That deep pink color is lovely. Never seen one flower before either.

[Zone7Bpalmguy]

7 hours ago, happypalms said:

I don’t know the name of this plant but it’s in the garden, pretty sure it was given to me. But to my surprise it has flowered and not a bad one at that. 

Beautiful! I love it. Would it survive in zone 7B? Just kidding! 😂 I do have a variegated shell ginger (alpinia) that survives in my garden though. 

[happypalms]

Some nice growing philodendrons to have in the collection. All are destined for the garden! 

[SeanK]

When I saw the title, I was going to ask about Monstera. I see you have those also.

[happypalms]

1 hour ago, SeanK said:

When I saw the title, I was going to ask about Monstera. I see you have those also.

I have a few different monstera as well the variegated ones. I only started collecting them a few years ago.

[happypalms]

A few more of my peroffskyana are coning. The age of them is about 25 years from seed I collected in the wild. Easy to germinate if you can wait around 12 months. Single plants will set viable seeds, provided you have the weevil that pollinates them. There is usually about 100  seeds per plant and there is about 6 in the garden coning. There even popping up as volunteers in the garden there that easy! 

[JohnAndSancho]

Reminds me I need to pot a few up and see if anything is ready for cuttings. Love Philodendron, my Congo Rojo is probably my favorite plant in my arsenal. 

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Reminds me I need to pot a few up and see if anything is ready for cuttings. Love Philodendron, my Congo Rojo is probably my favorite plant in my arsenal. 

Jose buono is a good one for you and burle  marx both easy growing, and are quite tough. What’s the name of your nursery? 

[happypalms]

On 11/22/2025 at 2:40 AM, Zone7Bpalmguy said:

Beautiful! I love it. Would it survive in zone 7B? Just kidding! 😂 I do have a variegated shell ginger (alpinia) that survives in my garden though. 

I was very surprised to see it flowering. The aloinia are a nice plant unfortunately they take to much water gor me to grow in the ground and in containers they drink so much water in my summer, so would rather water a palm! 

[JohnAndSancho]

2 hours ago, happypalms said:

Jose buono is a good one for you and burle  marx both easy growing, and are quite tough. What’s the name of your nursery? 

Sancho's Green Paws. I've been updating on YouTube pretty regularly. I've got a nice Burle Marx, a Moonlight, a couple Billitae, a really rough looking Brasil that I neglect, and I just scored a White Princess and Pink Princess for $5 each. 

 

YouTube.com/dbljzzl 

[happypalms]

54 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Sancho's Green Paws. I've been updating on YouTube pretty regularly. I've got a nice Burle Marx, a Moonlight, a couple Billitae, a really rough looking Brasil that I neglect, and I just scored a White Princess and Pink Princess for $5 each. 

 

YouTube.com/dbljzzl 

Do you send international 🤣 start growing anthurium vietchii as well get some small seedlings or seeds! 

[Zone7Bpalmguy]

Are there any hardy philodendrons to zone 7B -8? Thanks.

[JohnAndSancho]

21 hours ago, happypalms said:

Do you send international 🤣 start growing anthurium vietchii as well get some small seedlings or seeds! 

Lol I'll send anywhere in the world but customs is gonna gas it and hold it forever. Didn't I read a story where they held someone on here's palm for 2 years? 

That's part of my plan though. I'm starting tons of tropicals now, got the bananas so they can grow pups for me and sell the pups, got the palm seeds so I can wait 15 years until they're sellable sizes, I'm sowing the seeds of all the fruit I eat (lol I'm gonna have so many mango and papayas), sell the cuttings of the native stuff, then around this time next year I can invest in some shelving for the smaller anthuriums, philodendron, alocasia, more colocasia, etc etc and keep growing the fruit trees too. I've got a business plan. 

[happypalms]

A beautiful Australian plant, easy to germinate but seeds are rare in my area. They love water and if allowed to dry out they just disappear and return years later when they get big rain events. A nice understory plant with that fern like look, I would say cool tolerant and a bit of morning sun is ok. Once used in the cut flower industry as a filler with wild plants being harvested, I most certainly don’t think that would be happening today that’s for sure. But a nice plant well worth growing in a container or in the understory. 

[happypalms]

1 hour ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Lol I'll send anywhere in the world but customs is gonna gas it and hold it forever. Didn't I read a story where they held someone on here's palm for 2 years? 

That's part of my plan though. I'm starting tons of tropicals now, got the bananas so they can grow pups for me and sell the pups, got the palm seeds so I can wait 15 years until they're sellable sizes, I'm sowing the seeds of all the fruit I eat (lol I'm gonna have so many mango and papayas), sell the cuttings of the native stuff, then around this time next year I can invest in some shelving for the smaller anthuriums, philodendron, alocasia, more colocasia, etc etc and keep growing the fruit trees too. I've got a business plan. 

That’s the biggest question I get asked do you post internationally and yes I do! 
Bananas they grow them by the thousands in my area, we had them at work they spent over a hundred thousand in developed and plants then bulldozed the lot a year later. Look into lady finger bananas they are a lot more cold tolerant and much sweeter bananas. Customs have just a seed order of mine for 6 weeks I even phoned them up to find out what is going oh yeah they have been released, so I wait another ten days no seeds phone them up oh sorry it’s still sitting with us incredible how they don’t care. So by the time I get my seeds next week it will be around 5 months from the order date what stuff up this order has been. 

[JohnAndSancho]

49 minutes ago, happypalms said:

That’s the biggest question I get asked do you post internationally and yes I do! 
Bananas they grow them by the thousands in my area, we had them at work they spent over a hundred thousand in developed and plants then bulldozed the lot a year later. Look into lady finger bananas they are a lot more cold tolerant and much sweeter bananas. Customs have just a seed order of mine for 6 weeks I even phoned them up to find out what is going oh yeah they have been released, so I wait another ten days no seeds phone them up oh sorry it’s still sitting with us incredible how they don’t care. So by the time I get my seeds next week it will be around 5 months from the order date what stuff up this order has been. 

I'm growing dwarf Cavendish, blue java, Cuban Red, and I just got a freebie Mona Lisa from a mail order company here. I want to apply for a grant to build a completely self sustained grow house that can be duplicated in any climate and grow anything. I mean I'm low tech AF right now, my humidifiers are literally buckets of water. But I'd like to add solar power, an RO filter, and recycle the runoff from excess watering, this is doable and it's sustainable and I don't know why we don't just build grow houses and drill wells in starving 3fd world areas instead of building warehouses and sending them MRE's. The cost of the technology has come down, we're already building the infrastructure, just send seed and fertilizer and let things be self sustainable until the end of time. If I can grow bananas and papayas and whatnot here in essentially a spare bedroom, being the complete idiot that I am, anybody can grow anything anywhere. Obviously some climates will require varying levels of insulation and battery storage, maybe gas or geothermal power, but the concept is adaptable anywhere and I don't know why we send airplanes full of freaking peanut paste to sit in a warehouse when that very same warehouse could easily be converted into a farm. Hell, go hydroponic if there's enough water. Cycle it all back through RO filters and just keep reusing it. The concept is viable and it makes more sense to let people sustain themselves. Or on a smaller level, everyone in my house is disabled but if I were to grow tomatoes or cucumbers or whatever here, it'd cut down grocery costs and there's things the elderly and disabled can do. Plus there's the mental health aspect and the sense of pride. 

 

Yeah, you can tell I've been working on this proposal in my head for a while. And a lot of what I'm growing/trying to grow, most of it even - comes from store bought fruit and/or plants. The bananas and papayas caught my attention because they grow so big so fast, and palms... Well, they don't - but this all just hit me once after I had taken my night night meds and if it works I'll have tons of stuff to donate to food banks that honestly people around here have probably never had before. If it doesn't work, my idea is still viable and I can grow something else. I even bought a pineapple today just to root the crown and see how that does in here. If it works, cool. If it doesn't, I'm out $3. I know why my coconut failed and I can try that again. I'm gonna need to build more shelves and add more lights to do it all, but it's a 500 sq foot room I'm working out of with a janky ass old propane heater. 

Let me get more space with better equipment, automated drip irrigation, solar panels and battery storage, better fans, better insulation, infrared heaters, some ventilation, and in theory I can do everything except harvest the crops while I'm sitting on the toilet, help feed the community while being virtually independent of municipal utilities and using very little outside resources - you could put setups like this in abandoned buildings in urban areas, food deserts and whatnot, you could do this in actual deserts, you can do this anywhere. The initial costs are marginal when you consider that this could practically go on forever. No chemical runoff, no need for acres and acres of land, minimal threat of pests, wildlife won't eat the crops, the stuff I'm growing is self pollinating and reproduces itself so no need for crop rotation or reseeding, I just started Bokashi composting to reduce food waste in the house and throw that back into the soil, I could add a worm farm - If I could plant chicken mcnugget and burrito trees, I'm set for life. 

 

Anyway, this is a long post even by my standards, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, but like - the technology is there to at least put a serious dent in famine and world hunger, and IMHO it makes a lot more sense to use all the warehouses as grow houses instead of airlifting MREs and peanut paste and it can be done anywhere from Africa to Alaska with adaptations. 

 

And this idea came to me because I thought some plants were pretty and grow fast, and I got into plants because my apartment looked like a cheap hotel that someone stole the artwork from. 

[Dan64]

I’m enjoying mine 

[happypalms]

12 hours ago, Dan64 said:

I’m enjoying mine 

Nice one, he’s a long way from home! 

[happypalms]

A few tree seedlings for the garden, all grown from seed I germinated, some seeds were purchased and others from the garden. They will make great canopy trees the toona sp. and the others medium sized trees for creating shade and ornamental appeal. 

[Dan64]

8 hours ago, happypalms said:

Nice one, he’s a long way from home! 

A very long way! 

[happypalms]

6 hours ago, Dan64 said:

A very long way! 

Where did you get your plant or seed from?

[Dan64]

1 hour ago, happypalms said:

Where did you get your plant or seed from?

It was a seedling I got this year from a vendor on Etsy of all places. They were the only person on the internet selling any Bowenia, so I got it. I also got to find out that the fronds will actually move after they have grown out. The plant came with the fronds at a 90 degree angle to each other. I have no idea how they did that but it happened. I had to plant it at an angle in the pot. The frond actually start to stand up more and I just recently repotted with it almost straight up and down now and it’s straightened up even more (I’ll have to take a new picture tonight. This is what it looked like when I got it.

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, Dan64 said:

It was a seedling I got this year from a vendor on Etsy of all places. They were the only person on the internet selling any Bowenia, so I got it. I also got to find out that the fronds will actually move after they have grown out. The plant came with the fronds at a 90 degree angle to each other. I have no idea how they did that but it happened. I had to plant it at an angle in the pot. The frond actually start to stand up more and I just recently repotted with it almost straight up and down now and it’s straightened up even more (I’ll have to take a new picture tonight. This is what it looked like when I got it.

Nice one they have done there homework to get seeds of that one. 
It may have been a baggie method for germination hence the leaf angle? Dont let them dry out! 

[Dan64]

16 minutes ago, happypalms said:

Nice one they have done there homework to get seeds of that one. 
It may have been a baggie method for germination hence the leaf angle? Dont let them dry out! 

I haven’t 😁 I’m not sure as I’m pretty sure they weren’t the one who germinated it. Here is what it’s looking like now 

[happypalms]

A nice bit of garden colour will be welcomed into the the understory, give this a few years and iam sure there will plenty of colour being a monstera there will be no shortage of foliage! 

[happypalms]

14 minutes ago, Dan64 said:

I haven’t 😁 I’m not sure as I’m pretty sure they weren’t the one who germinated it. Here is what it’s looking like now 

Look after that little Australian treasure!