The instant tropics, hardier than you think. A palm does more than any other plant to conjure warmth and holiday ease, and the cold-hardy kinds bring that feeling to gardens far colder than the coconut coast.
Sabal tamaulipensis is a solitary fan palm from the dry limestone hills of northeastern Mexico, where the species climbs the San Carlos Mountains of Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon. Stiff, rounded, blue-green fans are held on arching stalks above a trunk that stays short for many years, so young plants read as a fountain of palmate leaves close to the ground. In habitat the palm can eventually reach fifteen to twenty feet, though cultivated plants are slow and often stay compact, and older specimens sometimes recline on a horizontal trunk rather than standing straight. Small, fragrant, creamy flowers give way to round black fruit in the wild.
Sabal 'Birmingham' is one of the hardiest fan palms an American gardener can grow, and the palm owes its survival to Woodlanders. Well-established specimens come through USDA Zone 7, deep into country where an ordinary cabbage palm needs coddling and near-perfect siting just to limp along. Broad, costapalmate, deep green fronds rise on a stout, slowly building trunk, giving the unmistakable palm silhouette hundreds of miles north of where the family usually stops.
Sabal etonia, the scrub palmetto, is a small fan palm found nowhere in the world but Florida, where the palm is a signature of the sand pine scrub, most abundantly along the ancient dunes of the Lake Wales Ridge. The specific epithet etonia comes from the Etonia scrub of Putnam County, the country where the species was first collected, so the botanical name carries a Florida place with it.
Sabal louisiana, the Louisiana Palmetto, is best pictured as a dwarf palmetto grown large. Where the familiar Sabal minor stays stemless, this palm builds a stout trunk in time and carries broad, blue-green, fan-shaped leaves on a far more robust frame, which is why the plant has been passed back and forth in the books, treated sometimes as a form of Sabal minor and sometimes as a hybrid with Sabal texana.
Sabal mexicana, the Texas Palmetto, is a large, robust fan palm once known as Sabal texana. In the United States the palm is native to the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and formerly ranged northward along the south Texas Gulf coast, while the wider distribution reaches through eastern Mexico into Central America. The species resembles the cabbage palmetto of the Southeast but reads as heavier and more massive, and the much larger seed is the surest way to tell the two apart.
Sabal minor, the Dwarf Palmetto, is the hardiest of the native fan palms and the one most gardeners can grow. The palm stays essentially stemless, holding a low fountain of stiff, blue-green, fan-shaped leaves straight from the ground, with the growing point set safely at or below the surface. Erect fruiting stalks rise well above the foliage and carry small black fruit about a quarter inch across.
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.
Sabal rosei, the Llano Palm, is a handsome fan palm from the Pacific side of Mexico, ranging through the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco, where the palm covers the coastal plains, the llanos, by the hundred thousand. Thick, blue-green, leathery fan leaves give the plant a bold, sculptural quality, and the slim, straight trunk is either patterned with a neat spiral of old leaf bases or swept clean to reveal the ring-like scars beneath.
Saw palmetto is the signature palm of the Deep South, a low, fan-leaved evergreen that carpets the pine flatwoods, scrub, and coastal dunes from the Carolinas through Florida and along the Gulf. The genus honors the American botanist Sereno Watson, and the species name repens, creeping, describes the sprawling habit, while the common name comes from the fierce saw-toothed edges that arm each leaf stalk. Serenoa repens is the only species in the genus, and among the most abundant plants in Florida.
Shade tolerant. Seed from trees with trunks.A heavy winter mulch is advisable for young plants in areas where palms are marginal. Or, the plants may be potted when received and kept inside the first winter.
A silver-blue jewel among native palms, this is the rare glaucous form of saw palmetto, the low fan palm that carpets the pine flatwoods and coastal plains of the Deep South. Most saw palmettos wear green leaves, but this selection, native chiefly to the east coast of Florida, holds fans of striking silvery blue, a metallic glaucous bloom that lifts the plant from a workhorse native to an ornamental of real presence.
This fan leaf palm is native to eastern Asia but is grown worldwide. It is the most common palm seen northward and grows well in cool regions including the British Isles and coastal British Columbia. Good specimens have grown outdoors as far north as Maryland and Tennessee but it is not usually happy in peninsular Florida. The trunk can reach 15-20 feet tall and is covered with black hair-like fiber. Plant in well-drained soil and with shelter from the north winds in areas where it is borderline hardy.
Wagner's Windmill Palm is known only in cultivation and apparently came from Japan. It is considered by some to be a variety of the common Windmill Palm (T. fortunei). It is about equally hardy and requires the same conditions. It is distinctive and distinguished by a stiffer appearance and smaller leaves. The Southeastern Palm Society's book Hardy Palms for the Southeast says: "The primary horticultural feature of Trachycarpus wagnerianus is its stiffness in all parts, giving the palm a refined, formal appearance. It also grows more slowly than Trachycarpus fortunei, so it can be planted in a confined space, where it will remain in scale for may years,"
The one palm truly native to the American West. Washingtonia filifera, the California fan palm or desert fan palm, is the only palm native to the western United States, gathering in stately groves around desert springs and seeps across the Colorado, Mojave, and Sonoran deserts of California, Arizona, and northwestern Mexico. The genus honors George Washington, and the species name filifera, thread-bearing, names the curling white fibers that hang between the segments of each fan.
