I just cann't believe my eyes after checking a couple of my Trachycarpus fortunei "winsan" whose new spears are about 10cm long.

I found last year some winsan with 3 ridges and Jim said it could be the upsidedown of 2 ridges.It just confused me that Wisan may not have 2 ridges.
So I pay extreme attention to its number this year.

Before I go into the subject, let me explain something.
Yes it is possible that we could confuse the upper side with the lowe rside of the leave.But,there is one easy way to distinguish between them. The " real" upperside is the side where the brown sheath is and plus it has fewer ridges than the lower side. Say, regular Trachycarpus has 4 ridges on its upperside but the lowerside must have 5 ridges whereas T.princeps has 2 ridges on the upperside and 3 ridges on the lowerside.However, few trachycarpus could for some reason turn the upperside down and so we could see 5 ridges at the "upperside" and 4 ridges at the "lowerside"

What took me by surprise regarding the riges on Winsan I checked today is the ridge number range from 3-6. It sounds really crazy and absolutely confusing to me. :?:
The following is the result of my observation.

1) 10 winsan have 4 ridges at the upperside and 5 ridges at the lowerside like we normally see.

2) 1 Winsan has 3 ridges at the upperside and 4 ridges at the lowerside
3 at the upperside

4 at the lowerside

3) 2 winsan have 5 ridges at the upperside and 6 ridges at the lowerside ,
The following is a winsan whose upper side is upside down,that is why I gotta distort it to check its ridge ,but according to the differentiating method above, we can easily tell which side is the real upperside.
5 ridges at the upperside which is however upside down

6 ridges at the lowerside which is distorted as lowerside up

4) 2 Winsan have 6 ridges at the upperside and 7 ridges at the lowerside.
6 ridges at the upperside

7 ridges at the lowerside

5) like T.fortunei, T.princeps-green(Nova) with 4 ridges at the upperside and 5 ridges at the lowerside

6) T.princeps with 2 ridges at the upperside of the leave and 3 ridges at the lowerside

That is some interesting stuff going on there Gary,I hope you will keep a record of the variations in ridges on your seedling so we can see what they look like when they grow up!

It would be interesting if there was some correlation between the 2 ridgers and the leaves being full round!

I wish I could take a walk through your backyard and see Trachys at home!

Check out the great shots of Takil and Martianus on GOTE forum and the discussion on Takil on EPS-lots of new habitat pics and heated discussions going on these days!

Thanks for posting this Gary