{"title":"Sabal Palmettos","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe palmettos are the palms of the American South, and Woodlanders has been growing them since the nursery opened in 1979. Ten kinds are gathered here: the cabbage palmetto on the state flag, the dwarf palmetto that will take a Zone 7 winter without complaint, and a run of rarer cousins from the Florida scrub, the Texas coast, the limestone hills and Pacific llanos of Mexico, and the Caribbean. Most are seedlings on the bench now, a year or two from a pot, and one is kept as a reference listing for a palm we have grown and expect to grow again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA few of these palms carry Woodlanders in their history. \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e 'Birmingham' survives in gardens today because Bob McCartney collected seed from the original Alabama tree before that tree was lost, and nearly every plant in cultivation descends from his seedlings. Our \u003cem\u003eSabal louisiana\u003c\/em\u003e comes from the much-argued Brazoria County population in Texas, and we were the first nursery to offer the palm. \u003cem\u003eSabal tamaulipensis\u003c\/em\u003e was named only in 2025 and is our first seed offering in decades. Five of this year's seed lots came to us from Joe LeVert of Augusta, who knew a good palm when he saw one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll of the \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e are fan palms, slow, long-lived, and tougher in cold than their coastal reputations suggest. Give them sun, room, and patience. The full palm house, cold-hardy kinds from four continents, is in our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/palms\"\u003ePalms\u003c\/a\u003e collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"sabal-palmetto","title":"Sabal palmetto","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal palmetto\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThough 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape \u003cem\u003eSabal palmetto\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983098995,"sku":"SABA-PALM-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-586.jpg?v=1720140994"},{"product_id":"sabal-minor","title":"Sabal minor","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe natural range runs from northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Oklahoma southward through the Gulf states, and that wide, cold-edged distribution makes the Dwarf Palmetto one of the most cold-tolerant palms in the world. The palm grows in full sun or heavy shade with equal ease, though the plant favors moisture, and thrives in the damp bottomland woods and swamp margins where the plant often grows wild.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe palmettos have long served the people of the Southeast, the fan leaves woven into baskets and hats and used for thatch, and the Dwarf Palmetto carries that heritage on a garden scale. The blue-green fans give the unmistakable palm texture without the height, an emblem of the coastal South rendered close to the ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e makes a bold, low evergreen mass for a shaded border, a woodland edge, a rain garden, or a pondside planting, and reads as tropical among ferns, hostas, and other shade companions. One caution shapes how the palm is grown: the deep taproot makes wild plants notoriously hard to move, so the container-grown plants offered here transplant far more reliably. Site once in moist soil, give room for the fans to spread, and enjoy a hardy palm that asks little.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983262835,"sku":"SABA-MINO-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-585.jpg?v=1720140997"},{"product_id":"sabal-louisiana","title":"Sabal louisiana","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal louisiana\u003c\/em\u003e, the Louisiana Palmetto, is best pictured as a dwarf palmetto grown large. Where the familiar \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e and sometimes as a hybrid with \u003cem\u003eSabal texana\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders offers plants raised from the well-known Brazoria County, Texas population, a stand of trunked palmettos that has kept botanists arguing for a century. Some have called the Brazoria palms simply trunked \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e, while others held them to be true \u003cem\u003eSabal louisiana\u003c\/em\u003e, and more recent DNA work on nearby populations points to ancient natural hybridity in this corner of the Gulf. The Brazoria plants may well differ from the trunked palmettos of far south Louisiana, so the material offered here is a distinct and collectible piece of that unresolved story. Woodlanders was the first nursery to offer the palm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike the other palmettos, the Louisiana Palmetto belongs to a group long useful to the people of the Gulf coast, whose fan leaves have furnished thatch, weaving fiber, and cordage across the Southeast. The whitish flowers stand on erect stalks that rise above the foliage in summer, drawing bees, and give way to small dark fruit taken by birds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the palm makes a bold, tropical-looking specimen for a moist, sunny to lightly shaded spot, striking as a lone accent or grouped with others of the same kind. Give heavy, moisture-retentive soil, room for the broad leaves to arch, and time, since growth is slow. Cold hardy well beyond the Gulf home, the Louisiana Palmetto brings a lush, subtropical note to gardens far to the north.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983459443,"sku":"SABA-LOUI-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-584.jpg?v=1720141000"},{"product_id":"sabal-etonia","title":"Sabal etonia","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal etonia\u003c\/em\u003e, 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 \u003cem\u003eetonia\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost of the trunk lives underground. Scrub palmetto usually holds a stem that runs beneath the sand, sending up only a low rosette of leaves, though now and then a short erect trunk appears above ground. Four to seven stiff, costapalmate, gray- to blue-green fans rise from the crown, each blade three feet across or more, arching in the strong, structural way of the genus. That buried stem is an elegant answer to a harsh home: in a habitat shaped by periodic fire, drought, and lean sand, the growing point sits safely below the surface and the palm simply resprouts after a burn.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite that deep-Florida origin, scrub palmetto proves remarkably cold hardy, thriving throughout Zone 8 and even into Zone 7. One of the plants in the photograph grows in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a long way north of the Florida scrub, and Woodlanders was among the first nurseries anywhere to offer the species to gardeners. Fragrant creamy-white flowers open in spring, held on branched sprays, and give way to glossy black fruit, in the manner of the palmettos that have long fed wildlife and furnished thatch and fiber across the Southeast.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden Sabal etonia reads as a bold, low fan of blue-green among plants that share a taste for sun and sharp drainage. Site the palm as a specimen in a gravel or xeric bed, at the front of a dry sunny border, or in a sand-scrub or native planting, where the arching leaves can be seen from the side and given room to spread. Slow, drought-tolerant, and unbothered by heat, poor soil, or deer, this is a distinctive and genuinely rare palm for the collector and the native-plant gardener alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983590515,"sku":"SABA-ETON-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-583.jpg?v=1720141003"},{"product_id":"sabal-mexicana","title":"Sabal mexicana","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal mexicana\u003c\/em\u003e, the Texas Palmetto, is a large, robust fan palm once known as \u003cem\u003eSabal texana\u003c\/em\u003e. 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew palms are woven more deeply into daily life. Across Mexico the broad leaves of \u003cem\u003eSabal mexicana\u003c\/em\u003e have long thatched the palapa roofs of the coast, the leaf fiber has been twisted into cordage and woven into hats and baskets, and the small dark fruit has been eaten, so the palm carries a working history alongside a wild one. The name honors the country at the heart of that range.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLittle grown and seldom seen in the Southeast, the Texas Palmetto is sought out by palm fanciers and collectors across the Deep South, where the bold silhouette stands apart from the more familiar cabbage palms. The species proves usefully cold hardy for a plant of such southern origin, and one of the palms in the photograph grows in Anniston, Alabama, a good measure of what the palm will take.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiven room, \u003cem\u003eSabal mexicana\u003c\/em\u003e makes a commanding specimen or avenue tree for a large, warm garden, the massive fans and heavy trunk carrying real presence against sky or architecture. Site in full sun to part shade in well-drained soil, allow generous space for the mature spread, and expect slow, steady growth toward a palm that anchors a landscape for generations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983787123,"sku":"SABA-ME-ICAN-01G","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/E6380369-8B3B-4DA5-8E7F-5FCC10C3D0C4.jpg?v=1783725486"},{"product_id":"sabal-birmingham","title":"Sabal birmingham","description":"\u003cp\u003eSabal '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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe story begins in Birmingham, Alabama, with a Miss Eva Alexander, who raised a single palmetto from seed she had bought from California and grew the plant on for some forty years. Whatever the seed's true identity, the palm she nurtured proved astonishingly tough, surviving freeze after freeze below ten degrees Fahrenheit and at least one plunge below zero, temperatures that should have killed any palmetto outright. When Miss Alexander died in 1976, the remarkable palm was donated to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe original tree declined at the Botanical Gardens and was gone by the early 1980s, and the whole singular lineage might have died with it. That the palm survives at all is down to Bob McCartney of Woodlanders, who recognized what was at stake, collected seed from the original tree before it was lost, and raised the seedlings on at the nursery in Aiken, South Carolina. Woodlanders first distributed the palm to gardeners, and virtually every Sabal 'Birmingham' growing in America today traces back to that rescue and that propagation work. This is, in the fullest sense, a Woodlanders introduction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe exact parentage remains an open question. Sabal 'Birmingham' was once guessed to be a cross involving \u003cem\u003eSabal mexicana\u003c\/em\u003e, though the very slow growth and hard-won cold hardiness point more convincingly to a hybrid of \u003cem\u003eSabal palmetto\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e, both of which grow wild in Alabama. The palmettos are woven through the human history of the Southeast, long furnishing thatch, basketry fiber, and, from some kinds, the edible heart, and the fan silhouette remains an emblem of the coastal South.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePatience is the price of admission. Even a well-settled plant grows slowly, a twenty-year specimen standing perhaps nine feet tall and fifteen wide, with decades more before the palm approaches the great heights the species can eventually reach. That deliberate pace is a virtue in a smaller garden, where the palm gives lasting structure without threatening to outgrow the space. Site 'Birmingham' as a specimen in full sun to part shade in well-drained soil, where the fronds can be read against sky or a plain wall, and grow a cold-hardy palm with a genuine piece of nursery history behind it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057983983731,"sku":"SABA-BIRM-01G","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/5E463700-1C8A-4B81-8B1B-E629225134D7.jpg?v=1787275037"},{"product_id":"sabal-rosei","title":"Sabal rosei","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal rosei\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor all that abundance in the wild, \u003cem\u003eSabal rosei\u003c\/em\u003e is almost unknown in cultivation, which makes the palm a real find for the collector. Our own plants were grown from seed given to us by Joe Le Vert of Aquinas High School, and we are glad to have it: the species is easy from seed and, unusually for a \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e, a fast and reliable grower, tolerating both flooding and drought while favoring the dry, open ground of the native llanos. Small yellow flowers, an uncommon color in a genus mostly given to whitish bloom, are followed by black berries.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite the tropical Mexican home, the Llano Palm is cold hardy to around twenty degrees Fahrenheit, into USDA Zone 8, opening the door to gardeners well outside the tropics. Like the other fan palms of Mexico, the species belongs to a group whose leaves have long been cut for thatch and fiber, so a working history sits behind the ornamental one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden \u003cem\u003eSabal rosei\u003c\/em\u003e makes a striking specimen for a hot, sunny, well-drained spot, the thick blue-green fans and clean trunk reading against sky, stone, or a plain wall. Drought tolerant once established and unbothered by heat, the palm pairs naturally with agaves, yuccas, and other sun-and-drought lovers in a gravel or xeric planting. Site in full sun, give room for the crown, and grow a genuinely rare palm with room to reward a collector's patience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057984049267,"sku":"SABA-ROSE-01G","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/SabalRoseiImage_1.heic?v=1787183451"},{"product_id":"sabal-tamaulipensis","title":"Sabal tamaulipensis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal tamaulipensis\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe path to a name was long. Carl Schoenfeld and John Fairey of the pioneering Yucca Do Nursery first collected the palm on expeditions into the mountains of Tamaulipas in the late 1980s, puzzled by trunkless sabals that ran along the limestone rather than standing upright, and offered the earliest seed-grown plants in their 1990 catalog. For years the plant passed among collectors as Sabal sp. Tamaulipas, prized for cold tolerance to rival dwarf palmetto yet dismissed by some authorities as merely a Mexican form of \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e. Only after DNA work confirmed a distinct sister species did the palm earn formal standing: Ayress Grinage, then a doctoral student at Cornell University, described \u003cem\u003eSabal tamaulipensis\u003c\/em\u003e with coauthors K. A. Peralta and M. M. Salinas-Rodriguez in \u003cem\u003ePalms\u003c\/em\u003e, the journal of the International Palm Society, in September 2025, drawing the type specimen from a plant grown at Tony Avent's Juniper Level Botanic Garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe names carry their own histories. The genus name \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e is an old botanical puzzle, a word whose origin was never explained by the author who first coined the term, while the epithet \u003cem\u003etamaulipensis\u003c\/em\u003e simply means of Tamaulipas, the northeastern Mexican state that shelters the largest wild stands. These seeds are Woodlanders' first seed offering in decades, and a chance to grow one of the newest and least common hardy palms from the very beginning.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePalms in the genus \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e have long been woven into daily life across their range. Related species such as the cabbage palmetto gave the Seminole the broad fans that thatched their chickees, along with leaves for hats, mats, and baskets, a craft that continues in Gullah communities of the Southeast. The fruit fed many Indigenous peoples, dried and ground into a sweet, prune-flavored meal, and the tender growing bud was eaten as heart-of-palm, a harvest that kills the palm. Little of this tradition is recorded for the Tamaulipas palmetto specifically, a plant known to science only recently, yet the kinship places the species in one of the most useful genera of the Americas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, the Tamaulipas palmetto offers something uncommon: a true fan palm for gardeners in zones eight and warmer who thought palms were beyond their reach. The blue-green fans bring architecture to a gravel garden, a courtyard, or a dry Mediterranean bed, and the roots, schooled on limestone, shrug off drought and alkaline soil once settled in. Pair the palm with agaves, yuccas, hardy cacti, and bold ornamental grasses for a xeric planting with real presence, and site young plants where their slow, deliberate growth can be admired up close. Patience is the price of admission, and the reward is a rare palm few neighbors will recognize.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Seed [10 Pack]","offer_id":45191157776499,"sku":"SABA-TAMA-SEED","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"1 Gallon","offer_id":45191157809267,"sku":"SABA-TAMA-01G","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/IMG-2373.png?v=1784630434"},{"product_id":"sabal-x-texensis","title":"Sabal x texensis","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe trunked palmettos of Brazoria County, Texas have kept botanists arguing for the better part of a century, and this palm is the latest word in that argument. Along the San Bernard River and the wet riparian woods of the upper Texas coast stands a population of palmettos that build real trunks, sometimes fifteen feet of them, in country where \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e is supposed to stay flat on the ground. For years the plant passed through the nursery trade as \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e × \u003cem\u003etexensis\u003c\/em\u003e, the Brazoria Palmetto, and that is the name our seed came under. In 2011 Douglas Goldman and colleagues ran the DNA and published a new name, \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e × \u003cem\u003ebrazoriensis\u003c\/em\u003e, for what turned out to be an ancient natural hybrid between the Dwarf Palmetto and the Cabbage Palmetto, \u003cem\u003eSabal palmetto\u003c\/em\u003e, rather than the Mexican Palmetto most people had guessed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhatever the label, the garden result is the same: a palm that looks like a Cabbage Palmetto in miniature, with a stout trunk, broad green costapalmate fans up to eight feet long, and fragrant creamy flowers on stalks that reach past the leaves in summer, followed by black fruit. The cold hardiness is the point. Plants have come through fifteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Arkansas, and the palm is widely reckoned the hardiest trunked \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e in cultivation, rated to Zone 7b. In trials the seedlings have grown at twice the pace of \u003cem\u003eSabal minor\u003c\/em\u003e, which for a palmetto is almost brisk.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur seedlings were raised from seed given to us by Joe LeVert of Aquinas High School in Augusta, Georgia, whose palms have furnished Woodlanders with more than one good thing over the years. Gardeners who know our catalog will notice the family resemblance to the \u003cem\u003eSabal louisiana\u003c\/em\u003e we have offered since the 1990s, which came from the same Brazoria country under an older name; the two listings are two generations of Woodlanders chasing the same remarkable palm, and we have left both stories in place rather than pretend the taxonomy was ever tidy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike the other palmettos, the Brazoria palm belongs to a group long woven into daily life along the Gulf, the fan leaves cut for thatch, hats, and baskets, and the fruit eaten by wildlife and people alike. In the garden give the palm a moist, sunny to lightly shaded spot and room for the fans to arch, and plant with the patience a palm deserves. Pair with Louisiana iris, bald cypress, and other lovers of damp ground, or stand the palm alone on a lawn where the trunk can be read against sky. A hardy trunked palmetto for gardeners well north of the Gulf, and a conversation piece with a long paper trail.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66779853422707,"sku":"SABA-TEXE-01G","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/81C168DE-674F-4DF6-BBD8-93FD8FAC8403.jpg?v=1791116589"},{"product_id":"sabal-causiarum","title":"Sabal causiarum","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSabal causiarum\u003c\/em\u003e, the Puerto Rican Hat Palm, is the heavyweight of the palmetto family. A single smooth gray trunk swells to as much as four feet through, the thickest of any \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e, and rises forty or fifty feet beneath a crown of enormous costapalmate fans six feet across, stiff and deeply divided, each with a conspicuous tan ligule at the base of the stalk. Cream flowers on branched stalks longer than the leaves give way to round black fruit. Where the native palmettos read as graceful, this one reads as monumental.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe palm grows wild in Puerto Rico, on Hispaniola, and on a few of the British Virgin Islands, in open country near sea level. The name is a hat. \u003cem\u003eCausia\u003c\/em\u003e was the broad-brimmed sun hat of ancient Macedonia, and \u003cem\u003ecausiarum\u003c\/em\u003e, of hats, records the industry that grew up around the palm: by 1901 the village of Joyuda on the west coast of Puerto Rico was turning the fans into hats in quantity, and the common name has followed the palm ever since. The leaves also served for thatch, brooms, and baskets, in the long tradition of the genus.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the Hat Palm interesting to a Southern gardener is that a palm from the Caribbean has no business being as cold hardy as this one is. Established specimens shrug off the low twenties without leaf damage, the palm is rated to Zone 8b, and growers have raised the species as far afield as Houston and the coastal Pacific Northwest. Among the big trunked \u003cem\u003eSabal\u003c\/em\u003e, only the Texas Palmetto comes close for cold tolerance, and the Hat Palm grows faster, which for a palmetto is saying something. Our plants came from Joe LeVert of Aquinas High School in Augusta, Georgia, whose palm collection has sent more than one rarity down the road to Aiken, and Woodlanders is growing a small first batch on in one-gallon pots. This is one of the rarest palms we have ever listed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the Hat Palm what any monument needs: room. Full sun, sharp drainage, and a site where a four-foot trunk and a thirty-foot crown will not be an argument in twenty years. The palm tolerates drought and salt once established and asks for little else beyond patience and an occasional feed, since the big fans show potassium hunger on lean ground. Plant as a specimen on a lawn or a wide avenue, where the trunk can be read whole, and underplant with sun-loving, salt-tolerant companions once the canopy lifts. A palm for the gardener who wants the largest palmetto that can be grown this far north, and a story about hats to go with it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66779853455475,"sku":"SABA-CAUS-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/923F3359-2634-42EA-B0A7-9E4C67C8CD0D.jpg?v=1791116428"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/sabal-palmettos.oembed","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}