I’m curious to get to know the "spirit" of this palmtalk group—made up of palm enthusiasts, people who love Nature, gardeners, botanists, ecologists, landscape designers maybe and so on. I am cleaning the trunks of various palms, including these Butia odorata x Parajubaea cocoides hybrids. I am removing and sawing off old leaf bases, fibers and the accumulated organic matter ("soil"), as well as ferns and young strangler fig seedlings, while leaving behind any orchids that were planted there or grew there naturally. There is another Butia odorata x P. cocoides hybrid, standing well apart from those three, where a guaimbé—or banana-de-macaco—has been growing for quite some time; it is a native plant here (*Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum*, formerly known as Philodendron selloum) that was planted by birds. I’ve often thought about cleaning up the palm’s trunk to improve its appearance, but then I think: "_No, just leave it natural." At other times, I think: "_Do something about that—tidy it up!" If I do clean it, I’ll have to cut through many of the adventitious roots anchoring the guaimbé to the palm... ***What would you do?

1- Clean the whole palm, remove the " guaimbé" and replant it to another site.

2- Clean the whole palm and try to replant it on the same spot.

3- Let it like it is, make some superficial cleanings on the trunk.what would you do?

Just leave it for mother nature to sort, it looks fine the ecosystem you create will balance it all out.

And I would also plant more palms of course, a few smaller lytocarum palms some chamaedoreas put a few Platycerium around on a few of the trunks. And a few bromeliads for a bit of humidity and colour.

And perhaps a few tough cycas species for a bit of ground eye candy. More orchids as well. A

I'd leave it too Alberto, looks great to me!

Agree with the above, everything looks great! That Thaumatophyllum in particular looks pretty nice growing up it like that.

My Butia has a few plants that grow on the trunk and I try to remove them but they are difficult to deal with . Yours looks great and as long as no harm comes to the host , let it be. Interesting that the Butia does this but my large Sabal doesn’t have a single plant growing in the leaf bases. It seems way more common with Butia . Harry