It's one of my favorite palms, and for me, part of the appeal are the fan shaped leaves, and especially the "furry" trunk. We have about 40 of them, 35 of which are lined up in a row making a nice looking hedge of sorts. They were planted some years ago at the same time, and until the season before last when I installed a drip irrigation system giving them some extra with regular interval watering, they received very little care at all, other than trimming off lower dying leaves once a year. Interesting is the growth variation among them; a few have trunks of only about 3', most in the 5-6' range, with a few 8' and taller. I guess for whatever reason, even though only 8' apart from one to another, some had more optimal growing conditions that others. Seedlings are not very hardy (in pots), but once the plant reaches a trunk size of 6" to 1', they do much better. Although I've been digging up the odd seedling here and there over the years, last spring a particular tree's seeds decided to sprout big-time. I pulled up over 100 seedlings, and potted them up. One year later, about 50 are still doing fine and others still in the ground continue to grow as well. IMO, it's a whole lot less hassle digging seedlings out of the ground grown naturally than trying to germinate the seeds otherwise! (soaking, scarification, blah blah blah)
Also, once well established they are very cold hardy. Our lowest lows of 20 degrees 12/2013 didn't faze them at all.
They make nice looking "bonzai" style plants in small pots which restrict their growth
- 2013 04 12 Windmill Palm a X735.jpg (137.24 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
Bigger pot, faster growth...
- 2013 04 12 Windmill Palm b X735.jpg (217.15 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
Seedlings harvested last Spring, greatly reduced survival rate than those left in the ground.
- 2014 04 04 Trachycarpus fortunei a X735.jpg (183.13 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
- 2014 04 14 Trachycarpus fortuinei flowers X735.jpg (139.97 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
- 2015 01 06 Trachycarpus fortunei row a X735.jpg (125.12 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
Note the tree to the right only about 1/2 the size as the others in this pic
- 2015 01 06 Trachycarpus fortunei row b X735.jpg (97.72 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
One of my favorite individuals because of the stout trunk, giving the tree a more compact appearance
- 2015 01 06 Trachycarpus fortunei row b a.jpg (158.35 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
Loads of seeds...under this tree a significant number of seedlings
- 2015 01 06 Trachycarpus fortunei row e C735.jpg (189.38 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
1 year old seedlings left in the ground
- 2015 01 06 Trachycarpus fortunei seedlingss.jpg (207.03 KiB) Viewed 2125 times
Close up of flowers