Saturday, November 29, 2008

Piccabeen Palm Tree

While Thanksgiving is a wonderful day to begin with, it gets better when you score some cool Palm Tree seeds. I was over my in laws house for Thanksgiving this year and they have a really cool Palm Tree in their front yard that was seeding. The Palm Tree is a Piccabeen Palm Tree ( Archontophoenix cunninghamiana ). This Palm Tree also goes by the names Bungalow Palm Tree and King Palm Tree.

This Piccabeen Palm in particular was about 20 feet tall and very healthy. They get the name King Palm because they can reach soaring heights of anywhere from 50 to 80 feet tall. They are native to South East Australia where they are considered a weed. These are fast growing Palms, growing at a rate of about 1-3 feet per year and germinate really fast too. These Palms are happiest in USDA zones 9-11. With the Bungalow Palm you have to water it regularly or it will look horrible. If watered regularly it will look amazing. The Piccabeen Palm Tree has bright green pinnate leaves about 8-10 feet long.

Here are some pictures of the mother tree that I harvested my seeds from.








Here are pictures of my seeds. I harvested 28 seeds but only planted 22.






Thank you for visiting, see you again next time!



5 comments:

VW said...

After reading your palm tree post, I searched my computer unsuccessfully for a photo I took of my Santa Clara, CA yard after a windstorm. The neighbor's palm tree - don't know the cultivar - showered our yard with nearly 100 brown, 6-feet long fronds. They had nasty thorns/prickles - what a mess! I don't think the dead fronds had ever been pruned from that old tree. Hopefully your palms won't make such a mess for you . . . are there 'self-cleaning' palms? In a few decades you might have to scale the heights to prune or hire an adventurous pruning company to do it for you. Good luck - VW

Lets Plant said...

There are self cleaning Palms, I have a few of them. They definitely make things easier. Thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you again!

Helen/patientgardener said...

How exciting I love scoring some new seeds and then waiting to see if I can get them to germinate

Anonymous said...

Hiya!
Just stumbled upon your blog.
Piccabean is the local indigenous (kabi Kabi -said karbi karbi)name for the palm. Bangalow is just common.

The name Picca comes from the piccaninni- a baby or small child and they were carried in the dropped head of the frond.... thought you'd like to know

Lets Plant said...

Thank you so much Anonymous for that bit of info. I was not aware of that at all!