I recently purchased two 15 gallon queen palms. They were leaning over a bit so
I tried staking them. The rain came and today I found one had broken about mid way down. The other in similar shape. Any hope?
Queen Palm disaster
They grow from the crown don't they? I had no idea they would break like that.
me either :- (
I tried queen palms a couple of years ago and found that they tatter in the wind too easily and generally don't hold up well. They finally croaked completely. If you lose them I would try a different palm, sucn as the Mexican fan palm.
I have 5 Queen palms, we will see how they do in the hurricane tonight! They survived strong winds(we get a lot of that here), a snow at Christmas and drought and hot weather this summer.
I also have Mexican fan palms, I like them too. The Washingtonias are nice and grow fast. The Cuban Royals look like a Queen palm but have neater trunks(the fronds fall off clean) and the green part at the top is pretty, they just aren't as cold hardy as the Queens.
My Queens took the tropical storm pretty well, but we did not have really strong winds. Maybe if you leave it alone, it will come back out. I am so sorry to hear that it broke like that. I wish they would grow fast so we could get a bigger trunk on them, they sure are skinny. My friend's broke off like that and new shoots came from the stalk, so don't give up. It wstill looks really small, but it is green and growing.
If the trunk is broken, not too likely they will survive, but I have seen it happen.. however, they will never be healthy. Best to start over. If windy season, start with smaller palms and let them become well established and slowly grow up into the 'wind zone'. Queens tolerate intense winds here in So Cal without problems normally... but they certainly aren't as flexible as Mexican fan palms. Fortunately they have wispy tops so falling over or breaking is a very rare occurence here, even in winds over 70mph
the queens are usually the first ones (palms) to snap in hurricanes here in florida. fan type palms will uproot instead of snap. if you decide to try queens again, make sure you dont put them near driveways etc. (lots of messy fruit). they are pretty fast growing in the world of palms. my first one was a 3' from home depot and in 10 yrs. it was about 15', flowering and fruiting. one mistake i made with it however was mulching too deeply. its roots stayed too near the surface and blew down in hurricanes 2 yrs in a row. after that we really staked it properly and left room in the collar so it could stay staked a long time. also raked almost all the mulch away. after 2 yrs. it was rock solid. we moved so i dont know any more about it. i sure loved it tho. debi