Well first of all you cant get an accurate age by the number of rings of a tree in some cases and maybe most cases.Trees grow more some years and less other yrs depending on rain and other factors. But with that in mind I do think you can guesstimate there age many times.Palm trees are no different because of many factors it is hard to guess an exact age. If all the factors are optimal you can guess the age pretty well on many palms just by there overall height. Some palms grow 1 inch a year and others 3 feet or more so if we narrow it down to a particular palm its easier to guesstimate.

ask the person who planted it what year that was.
really, it's very hard to tell. Different water, different climate can make a difference of 400% for identical palms.
You can guesstimate, rule of thumb, "figure about" by knowing what the average for a certain variety is.
EX with date palms, Khadrawi grow 4 to 6 inches per year, Deglet Noor about 12 inches per year, and Medjool about 18 inches per year, give or take about half that. It's fairly predictable that in the same place, same conditions, that Medjool will grow 3x as fast as Khadrawi so growth rates relative to each other are usually consistent.

Some people think that you can count the age by the number of rings but like mentioned, that varies from palm to palm and climate to climate. Something you can usually determine form the rings or the trunk in general is stress. The closer rings means it was under stress and if its really under stress you might notice the trunk is more narrow in some spots (sometimes its really noticeable).
Most people can just guess the age of the palm based on climate and the typical growth rate of the palm but its just a rough guess.
The reason why you cant tell the age of palms in the same way you can tell the age of northern trees is because northern trees do not grow in the winter and many only put out new growth in the spring so it will make a ring because its getting wider and taller every year. Palms grow throughout the year (occasionally slowing down in its northern range during the winter), but since it grows all year long and at different rates there is no way (that I know of) that you can determine the exact age.

Good luck!

I am just curious how many have cut a palm to look at the 'rings' and try to age it that way? Several problems with this technique, main one being palms are monocots and do not grow rings. If you have ever cut a palm you will just see a lot of dots pretty evenly spaced from center to edge. These are the plants vascular bundles. But you will see no rings as monocots do not produce diameter that way, pushing the phloem and xylem to the outer few inches as dicot trees will do.

Also, once a palm trunk grows to its adult girth, it does not grow wider from then on (only grows from the top meristem). So a palm that has lets say 5 feet of trunk may have exactly the same diameter when it has 150 feet of trunk.

Palms also tend to grow at a variety of speeds depending upon the conditions... so a king palm that is 10' tall in California might be 15 years old, while one grown in Hawaii that tall might be 5 years old. ONce you are familiar with how fast certain species tend to grow in your climate, you can try to guess, but there is no other way I know to detect age in a palm.

Sadly I cannot find any photos in my files to show you a cut palm trunk, except for this sad looking stump that was once a Tiki (and rotted a bit).. but you can at least see there are not any hints of 'rings'.

Hi
Have 6 queen palms grown from seed in 01. 2 grown directly in ground are now over 25 feet while two grown for 3 years in a pot are still under 8 feet Might add the smaller were root prunded twice . Purpose was to dwarf them . Two have actually grown together but instead of forming a U shape have formed a sharp V. Over the last year one has increased more in girth both are still the same height.. Might add that some in pots are still under 3 feet. YES you can BONSAI a palm but size is sure no indication of age lol gary

Sorry, what I was trying to say was that unlike northern trees that lose there leaves every winter and only grow in the spring, palms do not have rings on the stump when cut since they do not grow wider once they get to a certain age and because they grow all year long in the right climates.
The rings I was taking about on the palms were the leaf scars on the outside of the trunk. A palm under stress has closer leaf scares and palms with more distant leaf scars are growing faster.

Palms are monocot, not dicot (eudicot), meaning they do not grow larger from cambium - their trunks do not grow larger with age and therefore do make rings within their trunk. The rings that one would count are the ones going up the trunk, that show where the leaf/frond attached to the trunk. This will only give you a general idea, however, for all the reasons mentioned above.

I can only think I come close to guessing old ages of Washingtonia robusta since a few palms around here I know were planted. If you look at my pics of "Palms in wind" you can just about count 60 or so segment rings on those palms. I know for a fact they were planted in the mid 1950's.

But like the others say..that's for palms growing around the proverbial corner. Applying that to all might not be accurate. Or,it is.

But since I live in a mild temperate climate that does not allow a 12 month active growing season for tropicals,I think that ring counting might be accurate. If you know the palm well,maybe in the tropics the dry season might do the same.