More zone 7 palms

18 years ago

Members of the DC-area palms & tropicals group got together yesterday for a plant swap and garden tour. Two of our members hosted, and the gardens were well worth seeing!

One of our hosts lives in Maryland just outside DC and has lots of unusual and interesting plants, including at least a dozen palms planted in the ground. The most impressive by far was his windmill palm, Trachycarpus fortunei. This specimen ranks as one of the 5 tallest palms in the Washington, DC area. He does not give this palm any protection, although it's in a very sheltered location:

Here's Steve, our host, with his palm--please note that he is over 6 feet tall!

He's also growing the palm we were all sold a few years ago as Trachycarpus "takil", which in reality is apparently a selection of T. fortunei now known as "Nainital"; his specimen is just starting to form a trunk:

More photos of his and the other garden in my photo album (see link).

Here is a link that might be useful: DC Tropics plant swap/garden tour photos

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Comments (7)

topher2006
18 years ago
Awesome pics johnnie !
jimhardy
18 years ago
Very cool!Thanks for the pics!
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cactusfreak
18 years ago
Very nice. I want all those plants. I know it's a palm forum but I love the cactus.
Could you please identify these two for me.
islandbreeze
18 years ago
I'm not very good at cacti, but neither looks like a cactus to me. The first pic looks like some type of aloe, and the second pic looks like a tree philodendron? A very unsure guess.

Nice trachy BTW, I'm surprised it grows unprotected in the DC area.
JohnnieB
Original Author
18 years ago
The first plant is (I think) an Eryngium species. Second photo is of Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Steroidal Giant'. This selection seems to be considerably hardier than the typical one.

Islandbreeze, there are actually quite a few good-sized windmill palms growing around the DC area, mostly in private gardens and all of the established ones (5+ years in the ground) I've managed to track down are planted in extremely sheltered locations. The one in the photo above is planted between a house and a dense stand of bamboo.
palmloverny
18 years ago
Beautiful pics - that Trachy is something special!
cactusfreak
18 years ago
islandbreeze, to clarify. I ran my sentences together.
I was commenting on the other pictures of cactus on his site.
Yes I knew it was an Erigeron but what species. I think I even had it before but can't remember the name. And it died. They don't do well in our humidity.
Our Tetrapanax only gets 3 ft tall at most.
After all my name is cactusfreak. But even I get don't know them all.