Quote:
Originally Posted by Tog Tan
Howard, with its size and very low light requirements, I don't see any problems of you bringing it indoors.
Yup, yup, yup, the C renda is everywhere! The A catechu is a nice palm to grow but it gets tall. If you have the chance, get the dwarf version from Thailand. Sometimes sds of this dwarf cultivar are offered but not all germinate true. From what I gather thru the people in Thailand only about 80% comes out dwarf. It is a very lovely stout short palm which does not get more than 6ft in trunk height. I have the rarer form from Myanmar which is much stouter/fatter in trunk size than the Thai variety. A catechu sds will sprout in slightly more than a month if they are fresh.
Here you can see how tall the A catechu can get. It is growing by a river along with the Musa acuminata subsp malaccensis. Do you think you can still handle the height? 
Jack, Roystonea regia is one of the first palms to be used in landscaping in the city and they are everywhere. Now people are very tired of it and it's replacement is the Woodeytia bifurcata, the Aussie Fox Tail Palm. Now this palm is everywhere! We have Hyphorbe's as in H lagenicaulis but it is not popular because of the uneven development of the bottle shape. H verschaffeltii is also found as a landscape element but it is not popular as it is common looking. Anyway, both these two genus are very good growers.
Hey John, I tried joining sites like this and others but like here best, they mostly talk about growing it in the cold areas. I was also a mini tropics discovery channel of sort in my posts. I gave up after awhile cos I wasn't learning much. There is no doubt they are very good, especially on the technical side of things but I opted for the friendliness of this site. Probably it will be great for the people from the west as they can learn alot about growing palms in the cold areas. |
PREPARE FOR RANT
Like me and 80% of the people who post here as well. Take a look at the distribution of the posters here. I am in 9b and pass by hundreds of posts that are looking for plants to grow in zone 6 or lower.
For example, this thread is talking about C. renda (lipstick palm), Unless you live in the tropics, you'll spend a lot of time and money watching it die. /not good.
It is my opinion (with which you can add 4 bucks and buy a cup of coffee at Starbacks) that if you live in the tropics, everything seems to be pretty easy to grow. Slip into zone 9 or lower, the challenges mount and grow the lower your zone.
Just in this thread, there is a lot of misinformation re: palms already....thery die slowly and early successes in temperate and cooler areas are almost always followed by the palm struggling and eventually dying. I know this....from experience. I push zones as hard as anyone. For example, I currently have a Pseudophoenix cunninghamiana (King Palm, Bangalow Palm) which is a truly a zone 10 palm. I now have about 6 inches of trunk on it....and I know that a freeze could come any year and kill it (almost happened in 07).
I am sorry to be so strident on this topic, but it is frustrating to me to see so many folks push tropicals to such a limit and then fail. You can protect your banana by cutting it down and putting it the garage for the winter, moving palms is not practical once they reach and size at all, past seedling size.
END OF RANT!