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TWO YEARS without ANY new growth just sounds bad to me (and I'm an optimist!) Something is not right. I personally would have it replaced.

Thank you ever so much. As you know they are very expensive esp at that size, but we are lucky b/c we have a replacement in a washtub in our backyard that a friend dug up a year ago. My husband said he's going to wait thru this summer, here in NE Florida, and replace it in our fall. Thanks again.

That's a female plant and it looks like the seeds may not have matured enough to be viable. But just in case you could try removing them. They have a tough skin over a large seed. If you can remove that skin (carefully with a knife so as not to cut yourself and not cut into the seed itself) to see if the seed is okay. They're normally quite easy to germinate, provide you don't over water.

The other thing you can do is try to remove the dead matter and see if rot has gotten into the caudex (trunk) below. If the caudex is okay you'd expect it to produce some pups (offshoots) in time. You'd be right to give it to the end of summer, they can be a bit slow to respond. The fact that there's a lot of green there after two years shows something is still going on in the plant.

A Pygmy Date Palm, Phoenix roebelenii, probably older than 4 -5 years. A close up photo of the leaflets would help. How long has it noticeably been yellowing? How is the soil, do you keep it moist or do you let it dry out more?

Manganese deficiency can show up like that. Is it on all the fronds or mainly on the younger or on the older ones?

It's MANGANESE, not Magnesium. Magnesium deficiency usually show up as yellowing on the outer parts of the leaflets on older leaves.

Don't over do it, you only need trace amounts of Manganese. It should be in most general fertilisers but check your "palm food" and see if it contains some. If not find some other palm fertiliser that does. An even yellowing could be nitrogen deficiency, but that should be a component in all fertilisers, the N in the NPK. The damage to the fronds won't be cured, you'll only see the results on new fronds that grow after the application.

That proportion of Nitrogen should be okay. The 1% of Manganese might be a bit high. The problem you get with pots is there's not as much possibility of buffering by soil as there is in the ground. If there's too much of one thing or another, a large amount of soil will absorb it and lessen the extreme effects. In a pot there's very little soil and it's more important to get the balance right. One of the things with having too much Manganese is that it inhibits the uptake of Iron and that can lead to a chlorosis (yellowing) problem. As you delve more and more into it the more complicated it becomes. So that's why I'd stick to a general palm fertiliser which does contain Manganese as well as other micronutrients/trace elements. Don't want to scare you, but just want to give you a bit of an idea of what goes on out of sight under the soil.