Palms   Cold Hardy Palms

Welcome to the World of Cold Hardy Palms. If you live in USDA Zone 6b or above, you can grow palms. Not just any palms mind you, but native palms too - Especially native palms! The world of cold hardy palms is curious. Knowledgeable gardeners, nurserymen, and horticultural agents have known about cold hardy palms for decades, but the knowledge somehow hasnt hit the streets. Finally, however, the time of cold hardy palms has come to the limelight, principally because of the Internet and its world-wide-web. I present to you an introduction to the cold hardy palms. Hardiness is to cold snaps, not extended freezes, (which is why USDA Zone 6b is about the limit).

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Dwarf Palmetto( Sabal minor ), the worlds cold-hardiest dwarf palm. Jaycee Park, Raleigh, NC.   Needle Palm( Rhapidophyllum hystrix ), the cold-hardiest trunk-forming palm in the world.

Table of Contents List of Cold Hardy Palms Key to Cold Hardy Palms Species Descriptions Dichotomous Key to Trachycarpus Palm Morphology Palm Names & Synonyms Cultivation The Curious Distribution Bibliography   Cold Hardy Palms (an older version of these pages in pdf)

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Acknowledgements
What is contained herein was gleaned from the tree of knowledge grown and cared for by many others. These pages are a simple documentary of that lovely tree.

If you enjoy these pages you can thank my wife and friends for their encouragement and support. They deserve it. If you dont like this book youll blame me. I rather hope that you like it.

For some twenty years Gary Hollar of New Bern, North Carolina has grown cold hardy palms and sold them to an increasing assemblage of palm smitten gardeners. I never would have discovered cold hardy palms if not for Tony Avent of Raleigh, with his outrageous and mesmerizing catalogs from Plant Delights Nursery. Tony has opened the doors of the world to palms - and so much more! The same is true for Carl Schoenfeld and Wade Roitsch of Yucca Do Nursery and John Fairey of Peckerwood Gardens, both in Hempstead, Texas. We would be ever so much poorer without their efforts. It is impossible to ignore the assiduous work of Martin Gibbons, Tobias Spanner, Nigel Kembrey, Kiril Donov and their friends overseas. My hat is off to you.

Scott Zona has published his studies of the genus Sabal . Thank you Mr. Zona.

Lacepede was right. "It takes centuries to nurture the tree of knowledge and to make it grow, but one crushing blow from the axe of destruction chops it down."

Let us not chop it down.

Special thanks to Robert Craddock for editorial insights at a dark hour - mostly before and after his long days work.

Contributed by:

Mike Papay (Text and all Figures)