Serenoa repens

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.

Usually a low, clumping palm with creeping, often underground trunks, saw palmetto can in time turn upward to ten feet or more. Stiff, rounded fans of green to silvery leaves radiate from each crown, and in late spring branched panicles of small, creamy-white, fragrant flowers open among them, drawing so many bees that saw palmetto honey is a prized regional crop. Blue-black drupes ripen behind the flowers. Individual plants are extraordinarily long-lived, and some Florida clones are estimated at many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, old.

Few native plants carry a longer record of use. The Seminole and other Southeastern peoples ate the ripe drupes and turned to the plant as medicine, and by the late nineteenth century the berries had entered European and American herbal practice for urinary and reproductive complaints. Saw palmetto extract remains one of the most widely sold botanical supplements in the world, marketed for prostate health, though large modern reviews have found little or no benefit beyond placebo. The berries also feed black bears, deer, raccoons, and countless birds and insects, making saw palmetto a keystone of the wild communities.

In the garden, saw palmetto is tough, drought-tolerant, salt-tolerant, and fire-adapted, an evergreen anchor for a xeric or native planting, a coastal garden, a wildlife border, or a low, spreading groundcover on dry, sandy ground. Give full sun to light shade and sharp drainage, and expect slow but steady growth into a plant that will outlast the gardener. Site the palm away from paths where the saw-toothed stalks might catch a passerby, and pair with pines, wiregrass, and other natives of the southern sandhills and flatwoods.