Exoten und Garten Forum               Hardy Palm and Subtropical Board


9,766,929 Messages displayed since 03/03/2007

The cabbage palm

Message from Dennis Palms CA

Cordyline australis, a.k.a. the cabbage palm. “However, it is neither a palm nor a tree,” Kelleher writes. (Nor is it a cabbage, I might add.) A New Zealand native, the plant was popularized in Irish gardens as early as the late 1800s. By the 1970s—and almost certainly before that, Kelleher says—the palm imposter had gone rogue, spreading into the wild and lending parts of coastal Ireland a distinctly beachy aura.

The cabbage palms are able to thrive in Ireland because of warm ocean currents. Ireland is at about the same latitude as Newfoundland, but its winters are much milder. Last winter, though, Ireland experienced the unusual weather patterns reported in other parts of the world. “We had severe snow and frosts, with temperatures going down to -10 degrees centigrade,” Kelleher writes. “In fact, because of the extreme winter conditions last year many Cordyline palms were damaged or died.”

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/palm-trees-in-ireland-36548780/?no-ist


Exoten und Garten Forum               Hardy Palm and Subtropical Board