Hey all, here’s something I can’t quite figure out. My neighbor and I have a couple of this species and they throw out flower spathes regularly. But they simply never open on their own. So… We’ve taken to performing surgery to free up the flowers.. The thickness of the spathe is just crazy thick. We have found that if we simply allow them to sit, eventually the contents of the spathe will just get moldy-and yet never open. We are generally perplexed at why this is happening, but it is what it is. It actually requires a combination of a sawzall, a vibrating saw, and some clippers deftly used to remove the woody section without damaging the flowers excessively. The walls are thicker than my thumb is wide.

Edited yesterday at 12:28 AM1 day by quaman58
Misspelling

So when we do that, the flowers open within about 48 hours and then begin getting some pollination for seeds. Crazy, this is the only species that this is a problem with. Weird. First picture is today’s surgery. The second & third has some surgery that we did about six weeks ago.

Thanks for looking!

Keep us updated if you get viable seeds!!

Hi there,

I would love to help you out here but I unfortunately can't. The reason I place this comment is that I have exactly the

same problem with my Dictyosperma album var. aureum. It constantly grows new spathes but I always have to step in

and 'help it out' as you do. Maybe the problem is not Beccario -related, probably more in a general way...

However, wishing you luck -

Lars

Very interesting. I hope you get enough viable seeds. Guessing that something about your climate is non-ideal for B. alfredii spathe splitting. Do you think your location is less humid and/or more cool than in B. alfredii's natural range? Have B. alfredii growers in Florida or elsewhere in the SE USA experienced similar? I hope some comment here.

Very interesting! My B.Afredii is several years from being near flowering. But any full palm pics of your palm? Since there aren’t too many flowering Becarriophoenix in SoCal I’d be interesting in seeing the size of your mature palm!

This particular one is madagascariensis, although I have the same issue with fenestralis. Funny, a couple hours after I posted this, I got a call from Jeff Markus of Floribunda palms regarding an order I'd placed. So, I asked him about it & he told me that he had the same issue for the first few years with his as well, but to be patient and they'll grow out of it. I'll take Dr. Jeff's word for it. In the meantime, we'll keep helping them along. We are getting some near mature seeds developing, so that's good. I'll take an updated picture of the tree tonight.

This is a big boy. Thick, heavy trunk 25 feet from the soil line to the top of the tallest branches. Dead knock off for a cocos, if it wasn’t so thick at the trunk!