I’ve noticed that many palms with crownshafts come from places that get hurricanes, typhoons or just [EXPLETIVE!!!] destructive tropical storms.

Seems to work for royals!

Whaddya think?

I always had it in my head that it was an adaptation to super high rainfall, but I'm not sure if I read that somewhere or if I just made it up, nor do I understand entirely how it would help.

My thoughts align with Alzo. I just imagined that palms in wetter more humid regions would be more likely to get rot if there were more places for the rain to pool. But this is 100% made up and has zero evidence.

I think crownshaft prevalence correlates better with higher rainfall than with higher winds.

My guess is neither, but maybe more likely protection for the developing inflorescence from insects or pathogens.

Northern Australia gets hammered by cyclones pretty regularly yet there are probably as many genera without crownshafts: Laccospadix, Oraniopsis, Livistona, Licuala, Arenga, etc, as with crownshafts: Archontophoenix, Ptychosperma, Normanbya, Wodyetia, Carpentaria, etc.

To my knowledge they are protection from animals so they can't climb the palm to get the fruit.

Makes plenty of sense to me!

Like the thorns and needles on other palms . A defense mechanism? Harry

On 5/31/2026 at 1:48 PM, DoomsDave said:

I’ve noticed that many palms with crownshafts come from places that get hurricanes, typhoons or just [EXPLETIVE!!!] destructive tropical storms.

Seems to work for royals!

Whaddya think?

There are plenty of non crownshafted palms that are great in hurricanes, sabal causiarum sheds it leaves without leafbases in a hurricane, they snap at thje base of the petiole. After 3 hurricanes the last 7 years, I can say the royals are far more likely to snap the same way as sabal causiarum at the base of the petiole, leaving crownshafts in place. Might be that the non crownshafted palms are an adaption to cold, to protect the bud as they provide insulation. My neighbor seems to think my largest royal almost went down in Miltons 110mph. He claims that the trunk was bent in gusts so the crownhaft was about parallel to the ground and he thought it looked like it would break. That royal did seem to come out of the injury slow the first year, spitting out a few shorter leaves which broke off initially in less than typically stiff winds that have broken stems in the past. In Milton, my royals lost about 30 leaves(4 total leaves remained) on my two royals, all were snapped at the base of the stem. All those crownshafts came off the past 18 months. SInce the sabal saw the same exposure to the max winds on the same side of the yard with no windbreak, I would have to say its recovery was quite a lot faster. I will say the royal immediately went into seed production mode after the hurricane, like the sabal. It sat there instead of the 12-13 leaves a year it produced 6 that next summer, and 3 broke off. My interpretation is that survival ultimately means survival of the species and reproduction to a significant extent, and both palms seemed to be more prolific that way after Milton. It is the biggest inflorescence seed cluster I've ever seen on my royals.

14 hours ago, idontknowhatnametuse said:

To my knowledge they are protection from animals so they can't climb the palm to get the fruit.

Only trouble with that idea is that most of the time the fruit hangs down below the crownshaft, which therefore isn't much of a deterrent, unless whatever it is that wants to eat the fruit is coming down from the crown of leaves.

My guess is that it protects the apical meristem & soft, developing fronds/flowers from grazers/insects. Once fronds are fully hardened off they are less palatable. Much the same reason why many palms have red emergent fronds (red leaves resemble brown, dead leaves in monochrome, keeping herbivores away from leaves that have yet to harden off).

Not sure how they would help in wind storms; if anything, one might expect an adaptation against wind would allow the wind to pass through more easily, not the opposite.