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 '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.
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.
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.
