Sabal palmetto

Sabal palmetto, the Cabbage Palmetto, is the classic palm of the Southeastern coast and the State Tree of both South Carolina and Florida. Blue-green, costapalmate (fan) leaves crown a straight trunk that thickens to about a foot and a half across, and the whole reads as the very image of the coastal South. The palm grows commonly to around thirty feet and climbs considerably taller in Florida.

Native to coastal ground from North Carolina through Florida and along the Gulf, the Cabbage Palmetto has been planted far beyond that range for easy grace and structure. The common name records an old use, since the tender growing bud, the heart of the palm, was long eaten as swamp cabbage. The trunks carry a heavier history too: at the Battle of Sullivan's Island in 1776, a fort of soft palmetto logs absorbed British cannon fire rather than shattering, a stand that won the palmetto its place on the South Carolina flag.

Though usually found wild on sandy coastal soil, the palm adapts to a wide range of soils and moisture levels, taking salt, wind, and periodic flooding in stride. The whitish, dark-tipped flowers stand on branched stalks above the leaves in summer and feed bees heavily, giving way to small black fruit that birds strip quickly. Older specimens are often sold as costly large palms collected from the wild in Florida.

In the landscape Sabal palmetto serves as a specimen, a grove, or a formal avenue, the rounded heads casting light shade and lifting a planting into the subtropics. Site in full sun in almost any soil, give room for the mature height, and pair with sun-loving, salt-tolerant companions beneath. Slow, tough, and long-lived, this is a palm to plant as a permanent piece of Southern structure.