washingtonia

I know how slow some palms can be from seed phoenix and Washingtonia are the fastest but chamaerops, Brahia and Sabal are slow. I bought 6 Sabal Minor seedlings from ebay(saved waiting for them to germinate) but even now 18 months later they only have 4 leaves with no division, still patience is supposed to be a gardeners virtue! and with some palms, you need it.

 

I have a small plant of sabal minor which I grew from seed a few years ago, I'm still waiting for it really get going. I bought a plant of butia capitata (jelly palm)about 4yrs ago and although its planted out in the garden, with slight winter protection, its not grown one inch.
Can only asume its making root, and once it gets established it will grow away.
I also have a smallish Phoenix roebelenii, in a pot, which had previously stood still, that now seems to be making a move.
During a mad moment at "the palm centre" I bought a Bismarkia, strange colour, but not a good grower, in a pot, anyway.

 

I first saw a Bismarkia Nobilis in Thailand 23 years ago and I had never seen a blue balm before and I have never forgotten it, it was stunning, needless to say our climate is not to its liking. My Brahia came from the Palm Centre last year and only put out one frond this season.
I also have a Phoenix Sylvestris seedling which have hardly moved at all. As I mentioned some time ago, all my palms are in pots as the back(west facing)garden is paved so they will have a limited life. As Butias have a wide spread unfortunately I don't have room for one. :(

 

I think you'd have room for my butia :D :D
The phoenix sylvestris sounds interesting.

 

The one Phoenix that really bugs me is P. rupicola the 'Cliff Date Palm'. Most others grow very well here, but that one is desperately slow. It keeps looking as though it is going to take off, but then nothing happens. At best it produces just one or two shortish leaves a year - one of my slowest palms. I grew it from seed and may just have the runt of the batch.

I think Phoenix sylvestris needs a lot of summer heat over a long period to really make much growth. It can cope with a fair amount of winter cold, but needs a kick-start in spring to get going. I'm not convinced it is well suited to our climate. I've never seen it look really happy out of doors and although I bought a youngster from the PC, decided to pass it on rather than give space to it here.

A nice, silvery scaled form of Chamaerops humilis has made about 25cms. of trunk and masses of leaves this year. It really do well in this part ofg the UK and there are some on the sea front that are well over 3m high. It's not quite so fast as Trachy f. but that always a quick grower if it gets lots of water.

Most satisfying though has been Arenga micrantha. I bought it as a 2 year seedling from the PC and for the past few years it has pootled along. This summer it produced a good 1.3m long frond and there's a 1.5m long spear ready to unfurl. I have it growing in warm shade between the banana clumps where it gets masses of water and a fair amount of additional feed. Eventually I'll have to chop out one of the banana clumps to give it more room, but that's no big deal ... dare I say it, but I'm getting just a bit bored with them.

 

Dave, my Phoenix Sylvestris is in our glass house at work i.e it has had summer temperatues of 40c+ but still hardly moved. The seed came from Jungle Seeds and from past experience they have not been 100% correct on what they have sent so this may not even be Sylvestris. I must admit although I have been growing exotics for well over 30 years the one plant I have never really bothered with is the banana, it may be exotic looking but I could never get excited about it.
Arengas are beautiful palms, if I had the room.....

 

Not tried arenga Dave, save me looking it up, do you think it might stand a chance inland?
What about phoenix theophrasti, I've got a small one of those, but its slow.
I kinda like bananas but when considered against a palm, they are easily replaced and quickly regrow if damaged. Palms are more long term and need good planning. If planted in the right place a palm will get better every year, for many years, bananas are a good quick fix.

 

Strongylodon, I think that just goes to prove how much heat sylvestris needs. It is a native of India where it experiences massive temperature extremes and stupendously hot summers. Maybe as a more mature plant it can make better headway at lower temperatures, but I'm not quite that patient. The robusta form is supposed to be faster, but no-one has confirmed this in the UK as far as I know.

As to bananas, they are as Pete says - a good quick fix. They have their place, but not as main features. My basjoo was never going to be anything more than a 'filler' and I may get rid of it altogether this winter. Bananas become progressively more imposing and then flower, leaving a big hole when the growth dies. Fine if it's just one, but this year one of my clumps produced 3 flowering growths plus two on another so there's going to be some very, very big holes :(

More often than not, replacement shoots appear some distance from the original so the main focus shifts, sometimes just where you do not want. Lifting and replanting on a fairly regular basis avoids this, but these things aren't dahlias! The other problem is the disposal of the flowered 'trunk'. At up to 40cms basal diameter and around 4m. long, one is bad enough, but 5 is nightmarish :eek:

Pete, the only person that I know of to succeed with Arenga inland was a chappy called Imtiaz McDoom-Gafoor who lived in central London, but seems to have disappeared off the scene in the past few years. He grew A. engleri for several years and reported it to survive winter without damage and make moderate growth. A. engleri survives winter without damage here as well, but it is somewhat slow. If I can persuade it to form a suckering clump to shoulder height, I'll be happy.

A. micrantha is effectively engleri on steroids - much bigger and notably faster. Quite a few folks snapped them up when they first became available, but all reports I've read suggest that few if any are doing well. I suspect that very protected gardens in urban 'heat-sinks' and mild coastal regions are possibly the only places where these Arengas can grow successfully. Based upon information supplied by others, I can't recommend it even though it appears to do well here.

Phoenix theophrastii seems OK though and several in southern counties are doing well with it. It tends to be slow when young, but once it gets to its 6th. or 7th. mature (fully pinnate) leaf it speeds up. It isn't as fast as P. canariensis, but considering its eventual bulk, maybe that's not a bad thing. I like its grey-green, narrow leaflets - very dactylifera-like. It can clump eventually, but finding room for a palm with a clump of 60 - 80cms. diameter trunks could be a bit of a problem.

I've also got a 2nd generation hybrid; a reclinata/canariensis cross from seed sent from Italy a few years ago. It is one of the fastest of all Phoenix I've grown, although the seedlings are very variable. The leaflets are very floppy - almost ribbon-like and an extremely glossy, rich green. It could become a very elegant plant when larger. I raised about 30 giving almost all of them away. Eventually I retained the one least like canariensis. I've got quite high hopes for this - I rather like the idea of a 'weeping date'.

 

Think I'll give arenga a miss then Dave, thanks.
Hoping for some good to come from the theophrastii then mines just got its second pinnate leaf.
I have a similar growth pattern with many of my palms that I mentioned I have with the gingers.
That is, very slow growth in spring/summer, then in late summer/ early autumn they start to move, some are making quite reasonable growth at the moment.
Roll on the day when we get micro propagated palms of fast growing hybrids, if that is ever likely to happen :D Obviously with cold tolerance bred in.

 

Yes, I've noticed that in most years too Pete. Growth on many palms starts off well in spring, slows down in mid-summer and then resumes at almost full pelt in late August. I have a 'Bangalow/Seaforthia palm' - Archontophoenix cunninghamiana that has been pretty modest in its growth all summer, but is now growing away at a fair old rate. Rhopalostylis always wait until late summer before making a good amount of growth and they seem to get most of it in between September and December. The only one to ease off this year is Phoenix roebelenii, but that always does and really only grows well during very warm weather.

 

Could it be to do with the fact that most palms come from parts of the world that get less daylight hours than us, and tend to prefer to grow as the days reach about 12 hours daylight.

Or could it be that most palms tend not to grow at the hottest parts of the year, and in somecases, grow during mild wet winters.
But our winters tend to be too cold for growth to continue, so stops by dec/jan.
Any thoughts.

 

Its very difficult to say Pete. We may have longer daylight hours, but the sun's lower intensity coupled with lower average temperatures mean that energy production for growth is less than further south. That said, some palms may produce lots of starches which are stored in their bases during hot weather, but wait for periods of more persistent rainfall, to convert these into sugars and therefore energy for growth.

A lot of palms that can be grown in the UK do seem to put on quite a spurt of growth in late summer, following an apparent rest during July and early August. There are a few large Washingtonias nearby that are making prodigious growth at the moment, even though we haven't had very much rain at all. Conversely, it seems as though Phoenix canariensis, dactylifera and thoephrastii are slowing down.

 

Thanks Dave, so some do and some dont.