Dypsis onilahensis (bonzai?)

Dypsis onilahensis

Dypsis onilahensis (close up of trunk base)

This specimen of Dypsis onilahensis came to me as a seed in April, 2005.  It was placed in a 1 gallon pot as a seedling for about a year and a half before it was transplanted into this 15 gallon pot where it’s been ever since, about three years now.

I shared this photo with members of the Palmtalk Forum of the International Palm Society and was advised that this palm would probably grow considerably larger if placed in the ground.  It is a cousin to what we call Areca Palm or Family Palm or Butterfly Palm, which is technically Dypsis lutescens.  If you know what Areca Palms look like, then you can see that this D. onilahensis is a bonzai version of what it would normally look like at this age.   I have another D. onilahensis, smaller one of the same age, that I planted in the ground to see if it would indeed blossom into a full sized palm.  I’m going to keep this one in the 15 gallon pot.

Fast forward to 2017:  the smaller specimen died shortly after being planted in the ground in a shady spot.

The larger one stayed in the 15 gallon pot until 2015.  It hadn’t grown much beyond what is seen in the photos above.  It died after it was planted in the ground at the same spot where it had been sitting in the pot for years.

I have just potted a few D. lutescens seedlings.  I’m going to see if I can get a bonzai out of a couple of them by keeping them in small pots and pruning the roots.  Somehow I don’t think D. lutescens will stay small.

Areca vestiaria comes in several versions

Clumping Areca vestiaria with infructescence

I bought this palm about ten years ago from a big box store.  It was in a black plastic gallon pot and labeled “Sunset Palm”.  When it was young, the palm displayed a blend of color from deep red at the base and bleeding through a bright orange and finally ending in cadmium yellow as it crept out onto the petioles.

This palm comes in both clumping form and solitary form.  It sports mild aerial roots; more pronounced or noticeable in the solitary form.  Areca vestiaria also comes in a red variety; I can only vouch for a clumping form in the red variety.  I have not seen a solitary form but that does not negate their existence if there is such a form.  Oh, the red is closer to maroon; the new leaf especially displays this color.  My specimen, though in the ground already, is still a youngster.  The leaves appears to lose the red, or is it gains some green, as they get older.  The red variety also seems to grow at a slower pace.

A year ago, I held a palm sale at the garden on Labor Day.   This palm pictured above was a fabulous salesperson.  It managed to sell for me every potted clumping Areca vestiaria on the premises and a couple of the solitary form after the clumping ones were gone.  One thing about this palm, if you plan to grow them from seed, the seeds are viable for a relatively short period, about two weeks is what I read.    If you get them in some soil right away, they have no problem germinating.

The photo below is of the red form specimen in the Garden at Wakiu.  I had ten seeds to germinate; I believe I successfully germinated five or six.  After giving one away at the gallon pot stage, I lost all but this one; don’t know what the cause was of their demise, it makes this one that much more precious.

Areca vestiaria (red form) recently added to the Garden at Wakiu

dThis specimen growing on the Central Flat in the Garden at Wakiu has more yellow in its crownshaft.

The Palms of the Central Area in the Garden at Wakiu

The Bismarck Palm (Bismarckia nobilis) is not easily missed in any garden.  The silvery blue variety is an eye catcher anywhere.  Not too well known is the fact that this palm also comes is a less striking green finish, but its size speaks volumes to ascertain its presence.

Bismarckia nobilis, The Garden At Wakiu

This is one of the two Bismarckia nobilis in the garden; the other is eclipsed by the one in the photo above.  These two palms  are located about a third of the way into the garden from the highway.

New Leaf in Yellow and 5 more Spears to Follow

The neighbor to these palms is on its way to becoming a giant presence on that central plain in the garden.  The genus Metroxylon contains five species of large to massive feather palms native to the Moluccas, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu archipelago, Fiji Islands, the Carolines and Western Samoa.  All but one of the species is monocarpic; they seed once and then die.  The species that are in the Garden at Wakiu are both monocarpic so they will attain their maximum growth, flower, seed and then die, a process that will span a period of some twenty years or so.  The species pictured below is a young Metroxylon warburgii; the new leaf sports a pinkish tan coloring:

Metroxylon warburgii, The Garden At Wakiu, Hana, Maui, Hawaii

Metroxylon warburgii is native to Vanuatu archipelago and the Solomon Islands.  The smallest of the species having solitary stems (trunks), this species stem will attain a height of twenty five feet and a diameter of one foot.  It loves lots of water.

The Metroxylon in the photo below, neighbor in the central area of the garden to our Bismarckia above, is suspected to be of the salomonense species.  The plant was a gift as a seedling, the parent grew to maturity, seeded and died in Nahiku, just up the coast from the garden.  I believe there is also a specimen growing in the Keanae Arboretum a little further up the coast from here.

Metroxylon salomonense, The Garden At Wakiu, April, 2009

The growth rate can be seen here over a one year period:

This photograph of the Metroxylon salomonense was taken on August 8, 2010, a little over one year since the photo above was taken.  The difference in size is not as readily seen as was hoped.  The photos were taken from differing angles of and distances from the tree.

Same tree, later date

The Way It Is In 2010

Two Neophloga stand among the red Ti-leaves

The Garden at Wakiu is an ever evolving living work of art.  We moved to the Garden in 1999, into a new home we built here.  The house sits on the site of what was our vegetable garden, we grew a variety of vegetables and a couple rows of Tahitian taro.  The fence on the backside of the garden was covered with the vines of the soft shell passion fruit and the lower end was curtained by a stand of purple sugar cane.

The garden was filled mostly with patches of apple bananas and scattered around the perimeter were citrus trees; lemon, grapefruit, and lime to begin with.  Also among the citrus were a few macadamia nut trees and some young ulu (breadfruit).

Access to the garden was by way of an unimproved road (grassy and sometimes muddy) down the center lengthwise of the property coming right of the highway.  A swinging farm gate was hung on a solid six by six post at the bottom of the first slope about twenty feet from the highway.  The sloping entryway leading to the gate was lined on both sides with yucca plants.   After the gate, the land leveled out for forty or more feet with a slight slope from left to right as you entered.  We planted a Ti-leaf hedge backed by a Wili wili hedge the width of the property at the edge of the level ground before the land took on a second slope for about twenty feet till the next leveling out.   From this point on the land has a gradual slope running the rest of the length of the property to the back boundary some seven hundred plus feet from the highway.

The roadway ran halfway down the middle of the land to the end of the cleared area.  A bulldozer had been hired to grub the upper half of the property in 1990, before we started to plant; the lower half was still wild with overgrowth.  The first of the palm collection was planted lining both sides of the roadway twenty feet apart.   These first palms in the garden were  Pritchardias that were germinated from seeds collected in the 80s; several of the seeds came from the former Maui Zoo grounds in Kahului where a native Hawaiian garden was planted by Rene Silva, the grounds keeper at the time.  Rene gave told me which species of Pritchardia each of the trees were; I had at least one of each of the represented species growing along the roadway.  However, over the next ten or so years, I saw one by one of these palms die off mostly from the virus that attacks the growing point of palms.  One or two died from boring beetles or worms.  Out of the dozen or so Pritchardias that were originally planted, one survives today.  It is a Pritchardia munroi, which is among the rarest of the Hawaiian Pritchardias or loulu (as they are called by the Hawaiians).

After we moved into our new home in the garden in 1999, I began to plant more loulu.  My goal is to have at least one specimen of each of the species of loulu growing in the garden.  It was at this point that the garden started to take form as a repository of native palms.  Now that the surviving Pritchardia munroi was about ten years old and bearing fruit (seeds), I found that there was a demand for the seeds in the global palm collecting community.  I started looking at palms other than loulu at this time and found that I could trade my loulu seeds with a palm seed merchant for seeds of other palms from all over the world.  So, I started germinating these new seeds and planting the palms in the garden; there were more seedlings than I cared to plant in the garden most times, so now I started to wholesale them as potted palms to an outlet in Central Maui.  The sales helped to defray the cost of raising these palms, buying plastic pots, potting soil, organic compost and fertilizers.  Each time I was ready to make a seed trade, I would ask for the seed merchant’s price list, match up the available seeds with photographs of the mature palms in palm books or on the internet, select the palms that I found to my liking and then traded for the appropriate seeds.

Not all of my seed selections made it to plantable palms; some did not germinate, some germinated but did not survive the early seedling stage, but many did survive and have been planted in the garden or are still potted and waiting for their turn to be planted in the garden.  At this point, there are over one hundred fifty species of palms from a good number of genuses that are represented in the garden at Wakiu.

Champagne Palm (Hyophorbe indica)

One of three species I have collected from the Genus Hyophorbe, the Champagne Palm is impressive. 

Hyophorbe indica

 Where as the other two species in my garden, Hyophorbe lagenicaulis (Bottle Palm) and Hyophorbe verschaffeltii (Spindle Palm), have somewhat swollen trunks, this palm’s trunk is fairly columnar; the dark coloring in the trunk is only sporadic in mature trees.  All of these species are thin in the leaf crown; sporting only four to six leaves.  There is a “red” variety of this species; several seedlings are growing in my nursery and garden.  It will be interesting to see what they look like grown.

The three bears

Dypsis leptocheilos

Commonly called the “Teddy Bear Palm”, Dypsis leptocheilos is one of the more than 140 species in the genus Dypsis, all or most of which are native to Madagascar or the surrounding area.  The leaf sheaths that hold the leaves to the stem are reddish brown and fuzzy in texture, thus the common name “Teddy Bear Palm”.

These are some of the first exotic palms that I began to collect.  I was inspired to collect and grow palms when I first saw the Thurston Palm or Pritchardia thurstonii which is the oldest palm in my collection.  That acquisition started me on a search for specimens and information on the genus.   I am now collecting specimens outside the genus Pritchardia according to my personal affinities.  I am constantly adding new specimens to the collection, not all of them survive the seedling stage.  I lose seedlings for various reasons: some are not meant to grow in our climate, some are prone to disease, some are susceptible to insects and other pests and some just don’t get along in my garden. 

My garden is my grounding rod.  It’s where I am able to release the tensions of the day or week or even month.  Sometimes I get so busy with being busy that I forget to go out in the garden.  In times like that, I end up devoting several days consecutively working in the garden because after several weeks it begins to look like a jungle.  One day I hope to have a gardener to help me maintain, kinda put it on automatic pilot.  The only way for this to happen will be to turn the garden into an asset that can at least earn its own keep.  (that’s my dream)  And I can devote my time to my artwork and nurturing the new palm seedlings in a greenhouse.

Pigafetta filaris

The adolescent specimen of Pigafetta filaris above is a ways from showing a stem (trunk) at this point.  This tree is about three years old.  Once they show a trunk, their growth rate is rapid, especially in their native habitat in Sulawesi, the Moluccas, and Irian Jaya, New Guinea.  The solitary trunks grow to 120 feet and more with a diameter of 18 inches.  The trunks are green and ringed with light gray leaf scars.  They are known to grow as much as three feet of trunk in a year, one of the fastest growing palms known.

 

Metroxylon sp.

This Metroxylon sp. is an adolescent, but not quiet ready to show trunk.  The leaves are about twelve to fifteen feet long at this point.  I am not sure of the species, but speculate that it is either amicarum or salomonense.  The leaves will grow to approximately thirty feet in length at maturity.  They flower up the middle or at the growing point, and the seed pods looking like scaly eggs form on antler-like branches, which looks like a giant Christmas tree.  The whole process takes several years and in the end, the whole tree dries up and dies.  But there will be hundreds of seed pods to start the whole process again.  Of course, you have to stick around for some thirty years or so to see the whole cycle.  This growth cycle is not unique to this genus, and there may be a species or two that do not follow this life cycle.  The genus Corypha grows giant fan shaped leaves, kind of a palmate (as opposed to pinnate) correlant to the Metroxylon.

Hyophorbe verschaffeltii

 

 

There are more than loulu palms growing in my garden, and I plant more from time to time.  The palm in the center of the photograph below is a Hyophorbe verschaffeltii or commonly called the Spindle Palm.  The Bottle Palm (Hyophorbe lagenicaulis) and the Champagne Bottle Palm (Hyophorbe indica) are also members of the genus.

Neophloga, Is There Such A Palm?

I germinated some Neophloga seeds that I got in a trade with a palm seed merchant.  I think four seedlings survived, I kept two and traded the other two with friends for other palms to add to my collection.  The two I have in my garden are now taller than I am and flourishing.  I’ll see if I can get a current photo of them to add to this site.  I don’t find much in the literature about Neophloga, I tend to think that this palm now comes under a different label.  I see similarities to Dypsis pinnatifrons, but there are also differences.  It is unique looking and slender with a slight swelling at the base of the stem.  Pinkish tint is noticeable in the crownshaft and the new leaf.  The trees I have should be flowering soon, I think, but then they are planted near the Spindle palm shown immediately above.  That tree is mature but it has yet to flower and seed.  However, the Cyrtostachys renda clump growing between them has produced flowers and seeds several times, so it couldn’t be a location factor.  What do you think?

I think this palm makes a wonderful potted house plant.  It doesn’t grow too fast, has some color, is unique looking and should do well with enough sunlight near a window.  It seems to not mind a lot of moisture, but I would not over water it.  It will not be intrusive near the house, but I don’t know how tall it will get; my two trees are about eight years old, they stand seven feet high.  Probably would be half that height if they were kept in a pot.