Experiments at the Palm Laboratory

17 years ago

In an effort to come up with California fan palms that would survive the very high humidity of NW Alabama I did the following and put hundreds of filifera through the ringer!

Seedlings were placed last year into conetainers. I grew them indoors in three inches of water in closed fish tanks under extremely high humidity. Next they were set outside in full day-long sun without sun acclimation in NW Alabama. They have seen multiple days of wind gusts of 37-40 m.p.h. and nightly lows down to 22 F. on multiple occasions. The outdoor humidity this past year has been particularly brutal to filifera. The exceptional survivors are super hardy. They are currently pushing out new split leaves and need to be transplanted into tall gallon size or larger pots. They will explode with growth once potted up, quadrupling their size within six months.

The seed source I used for these was Truth or Consequences, N.M. locale from parent plants that have survived -4 F. These should have a much better chance of surviving wet conditions in the Southeast. For further info please contact me.

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Comments (5)

orchiddude
17 years ago
I grow Ca fan palm and I have no problem with humidity.
unautre
17 years ago
There are 100s of mature and thriving Mx fan palms, eg, a few 100 in the Brentwood Golf course, in Beaumont TX, which must have about the same humidity as the Gulf Coast further east.

The MX fan palm is a desert palm but I don't see any evidence that it refuses water and humidity when available.
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royalpalm321
17 years ago
I live in Orlando the humid hell capitol in summer time,and we have mex fan palms everywhere.The reason why the mex fan palms look so good in southern california,they have more days of un interupted sunshine(southwest in general az,nev,)allows the palms to reach sky scraper heights.Also lighting strikes are very rare in that area.Many mex fans in Florida get zapped if they reach a certain height.Lightning kills the tree instantly.
Steve
Original Author
17 years ago
unautre and royalpalm321,
The two of you are confusing two different species. I posted about Washingtonia filifera, NOT ROBUSTA. They have different environmental requirements. I guess I should be posting in forums with readers that are more familiar with common types of palms.
mrbungalow
17 years ago
You might want to try "Filibusta" wich is a hybrid between the 2. It's supposed to have the best of both: Can withstand cold temps as filifera and tolerates damp conditions like robusta. I have no idea on where to get reliable seeds of this hybrid though. Some say filibusta is very common, others say filifera and robusta set seed at different times, and therefore hybridize rarely.

Erlend