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alexisreal

Coconut palm identification

alexisreal
10 years ago

I bought this palm in houston. Was told it was a dwarf malayan and hoping someone can id for me

Comments (11)

  • alexisreal
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Here is another angle of the same palm

  • tropicbreezent
    10 years ago

    Was the nut still attached? It's very difficult just from a small plant to ID it. But I find that the nuts on the dwarf tends to be a bit smaller and elongated. That's not a guarantee for an exact ID for variety but is the closest I can get.

  • coconut_palm
    10 years ago

    Looks like a Golden Malayan Dwarf. Where did you buy it at, and for how much? Also, how do you post photos here? I would like to post some photos of my coconut palms growing in my yard in Corpus Christi, but each time I try, the site says my photos are two large. I am not very high tech savvy, so what can I do to post my photos taken from my digital camera. I am able to email the photos to other people, but this site won't let me post the same size photos for some reason.

    Thanks,
    John

  • alexisreal
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    John, you have to reduce the size of your photos. You can do this by simply clicking on the picture on your computer and options menu ops up, then you reduce the resolution size, typically 72 resolution is good for the web.

  • coconut_palm
    10 years ago

    Okay, thanks. I will try that and see if I can get my photos uploaded here this weekend. By the way, where did you buy your coconut palm from and for how much?

  • alexisreal
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I bought it at traders village in houston, it was 65 dols, so I hope it really is a coconut palm , where did u get urs and how long have they been planted in the ground ?

  • williamr
    10 years ago

    Don't worry Alex, that is a real Cocos nucifera you have there.

  • coconut_palm
    10 years ago

    What is Trader's Village? The three I have in the ground are, two in the front yard and one in the back yard. In the front, I have a Golden Malayan Dwarf that I ordered through a nursery in South Florida a few years ago. I was shipped with four others through UPS, but the driver killed 3 of the 4 by throwing the package down onto the concrete front porch. I was furious. Anyway, one survived and grew very slowly because I would have to keep it inside my homemade greenhouse in Bryan in the winter. I moved to Corpus Christi last May, but did not plant it in the ground until April of this year. It has doubled in size from 2.5 feet to 5 feet since April! I use an all organic fertilizer made in Houston called MicroLife 6-2-4 all purpose. It has 70 micronutrients and is specifically formulated for the Texas Gulf Coast. Randy Lemon of the GardenLine program recommended this fertilizer to me.

    The second one in the front yard is a Jamaican Tall (I think) collected by my wife in December of 2010 underneath a mature Jamaican Tall in Key Largo while we were looking for good viable coconuts and/or sprouted nuts. It has doubled in crown width since being planted in the ground in April, but has only gotten slightly taller. It too was stunted from being kept in my greenhouse in Bryan for a couple of winters, but has really started putting out robust new leaves since April. It is about 3.5 ft. tall now.

    The third one I have is planted in the back yard, and it was sprouted from a coconut I collected off the beach in the vicinity of Matagorda Peninsula or one of the beaches just north of there last Spring. It sprouted just a couple of months after moving to Corpus. I think it is a Golden Malayan Dwarf too since it has the golden colored petiole and has a very straight trunk. The most cold hardy variety in the Western Hemisphere is the pure Mexican Tall. I estimate Mexican Talls when they have some size to them to be hardy to 26F. There are two mature Mexican Talls in Brownsville that have survived at least 3 hard freezes in the last 10 years, 2 of those freezes were in the 26 -27F range, and one of those freezes included a couple of inches of snow during the Christmas snowstorm in 2004, when the Lower Rio Grande Valley had it's first snow storm in 104 years! I collect as many viable coconuts as I can find off the Texas beaches each year. Coconut palms easily hybridize, especially nuts from Tall varieties (Malayan Dwarfs I believe are self pollinating and therefore produce pure variety offspring). I have 3 out of the hundreds a friend and I have collected that have just sprouted in the last two and a half weeks. When they get to be about 3-4 ft. tall, I sell them to people.

  • tropicbreezent
    10 years ago

    Interesting about that "MicroLife 6-2-4 all purpose with 70 micronutrients". I remember the old people telling me that if you run short on water for your coconuts you can always just give them a bucket of sea water. They said it was even beneficial for them. Sea water has about every nutrient there is, just that it's got a lot of sodium chloride mixed in with it. I read some time ago about experiments carried out on inland growing coconuts to see how they would react to sodium chloride in their fertiliser program. Apparently a certain amount is good for them. But if you use sea water then you get all the other goodies as well. Excepting NPK would be extremely low. I've been meaning to give it a try, there's sea water not all that far away from me.

  • coconut_palm
    10 years ago

    Sea Water is great for my health. I feel better close to the sea and have a little bit more energy than I do away from the sea. I use natural sea water in my marine aquariums, and my fish seem to be doing fine. I think if there would be an economical way of removing the salt from seawater, it would be a great source of water for other plants that aren't as salt tolerant, because like you said sea water has about every nutrient there is.

    The coconut palm, especially the Tall varieties that grow naturally along tropical beaches, and sea grapes (a tropical tree with large round leathery green leaves native to the beaches of South Florida, the Caribbean Islands, and the Yucatan) are probably the most salt tolerant trees in the world, aside from the mangrove trees of course. I have seen photos of mature coconut palms growing on tiny little islands of sand that are almost totally inundated at high tide. Also, I have heard several local accounts of people finding sprouted nuts on Texas beaches, though I haven't been that lucky yet. I know of a woman who once found a sprouting coconut in the surf line off the beach at Galveston, which means that nut sprouted while floating in the sea water of the Gulf Of Mexico.

  • alexisreal
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Some time ago, about a month or so, I layed a store bought coconut and one say I was surprised and pleased it had sprouted! No special care , just layed it on the ground .... I guess the rain and humidity in houston made it feel at home! I quickly went to the grocery stor and got more... I see more sprouts!!! I feel blessed and thankful such beauty!

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