Righting Downed Trees, Palm Trees

Oh No, Your Palm is on the Ground!

The Tropical Grower loves palms. They’re all over Our Garden.  From the family Arecaceae, there are literally thousands of varieties of palms, mostly tropical and subtropical, but The Tropical Grower is focusing on trees at the moment, getting them off the ground.  

Biologists will tell you palms aren’t actually trees and for good reason.  While they are very tree-like in our area, their trunks are made up of tightly packed fibers instead of wood pulp.  They don’t grow in rings.  You can’t chip these without funking up the insides of the chipper with twisty bunched up fiber balls.  No fun.

You can recognize palm trees by their compound evergreen fronds, leaves, arranged at the top of an unbranched stem.  Think, one single trunk with a bushy ponytail sitting on the top.  We have several around Our Garden: Cabbage Palms, Coconut Palms, Plantains and White Birds of Paradise.  The story of the Queen Palm we’ll get to later.  

A couple of the Plantain trees and 5 of our 6 White Birds of Paradise went down in Hurricane Ian.  In addition, we obtained a snapped Queen Palm by having it illegally dumped in Our Garden.  Joy.  These were added up near the top of the list for restoration and replanting.

Shove ‘Um Upright

For the most part, you literally can shove palms back upright, stabilize, and they are good to go.  On occasion, the rootball needs to be reburied, but usually it goes right back in the ground. Not saying I wouldn’t baby the thing for a while, extra water, some fertilizer.  I’m simply saying there isn’t any magic to it.  If they have their rootball intact, life is golden.  Chances are extremely good it’s coming back.

If the trunk has snapped or is otherwise unusable, don’t fret, there is still hope.  These things have had thousands of years of evolution thriving in tropical climates, where we get big storms.  I’ve seen snapped palms in the wild reroot and continue their life without any help at all.  

Plantain Trees

Plantains are the smaller cousins of bananas, growing up in a different region. Yes, our plantains grow fruit, less sweet than bananas – better cooked in my opinion. We grow these in several spots around the garden for food.  They also have a cool tropical feel with their big leaves that provide mid-level screening.  We had a single plantain ‘bunch’ ready to harvest when Hurricane Ian hit.  Top heavy, the whole tree went down, but don’t worry, we harvested and ate it, no problem.

Plantain trees fall over.  It’s kind of their thing.  They have a large rhizome ball underground, a big ole rootball.  It produces what they call suckers, little plant heads with the ponytail leaves, that grow from the rhizome ball into the tree part.  When the tree gets large enough, it produces a large bunch of plantains and falls over, or they just fall over without producing.  The new suckers grow from the rootball either in the same place, or they “walk” a little further out from the ball and grow.  It’s their life cycle.

Lift with Hand, Compact with Foot

Because of their natural cycle, these babies go down all the time in storms, especially if I’ve moved their rootball anytime the previous year.  I literally just prop them back up and foot compact around the root until it stands up on its own.   If it feels wobbly at all, I add a sturdy stake for support.  Done. It’s probably going to die and send up new suckers.

Unless I’ve just transplanted rootballs or they’ve had some other stress, I’m more likely to want to prune back the suckers and roots instead of fearing there won’t be any. The rootballs will even grow planted sideways, I   Newly planted rootballs tend to hold on to the current tree while they’re establishing themselves. So, propping up is better for these.

Plantains are hearty growers.  In fact, it’s very difficult to contain these to a particular spot.  It’s best to plan a wide area where you can walk them around and prune.  A couple going down, not a real problem.  I give away plantains every year.

Harvesting Before the Storm is Always A Good Idea

Regardless, this is about Righting Downed Trees, and I only put one of the two back up.  As I mentioned, we had one tree almost ready to harvest when Hurricane Ian hit.  I saw it.  I could have cut it, but I was hoping, as only a goofy grower could, it would have a little more cook-time on the tree.  It went down into the flooded yard.  Dang.  

Harvesting and hanging them in the lanai was one of the first things I did the morning after Ian.  The ants love the things, hanging is necessary.  They were delicious.

The tree part fell outside its required growing area.  Foul.  I simply lifted the whole thing and flipped it back over inside the lines.  We need to pause here because technically there were no lines at the time as this was underwater and all the borders had floated to new locations.  Don’t worry, I have a pretty good layout of Our Garden in my head.

Baby Plantain Trees

Because this tree was in full fruit, the rootball was still firmly attached to the trunk.  It came up with the tree.  When I flipped it back over, I landed the rootball where it was previously planted.  It was settled into the ground when the floodwaters finally went down.  I packed some fresh garden compost around it anyway, and the rootball immediately sent up several suckers.  It’s companion plantain tree in this same area died after the storm, standing, also sending up suckers.  Basically, I have a bed of baby plantain trees.  

The other plantain tree going down in the storm was a new plant in the back berm.  I lifted it back up and packed the root ball with my foot.  It’s good.  Didn’t even need a stake.  Tropical Storm Nicole hitting us about a month and a half later proves it.  It died anyway, standing up, or the tree part did.  The rootball sent up three new trees.  Hearty grower.

White Birds of Paradise

Less a single plant than a bushy large leaf area until an individual cluster gets big/old enough to start lifting itself up on a trunk out of the big leaves.  Screening delux if you have a large enough area to accommodate it, planning at least a 10 foot circle.  The catch is only the trees produce the white and purple Birds of Paradise flowers.  These are huge and almost always 20 feet or more in the air.

Our Garden had these in four areas prior to Hurricane Ian.  Three were merely bushy, but the one by the pool had 6 White Birds of Paradise trees.   We lost one whole bushy area by the back fence.  Dead.  No come back, and 5 of the 6 trees went down on the Cage Match.  Snapped or bent in half, no standing back up.  Blah.

The dead bushy area I have done nothing to clean up.  It is just a dry brown thing sitting there while I decide on a new area plan.  I need more dry detention.  I’m leaning toward transplanting a Boney Finger Philodendron to the area.  

Demo

The 5 trees I had to finagle off the top of the Cage Match.  This is the area of Bougainvillea, Dragon Fruit Cactus, Sheffallera, Yucca, and White Birds of Paradise, all old growth, fighting it out so I don’t have to fight with them.   Now, it is important to remember I am short.  The tunnel through the center of the Cage Match is 7 feet tall.  I’m not even touching the top without a boost.  It just goes up from there.

A strap, a big trimming pole, a ladder, and a bunch of heaving is all you really need to know.  There were some naughty words, I’m not going to lie.  But this isn’t about demo, it’s about replanting because a snapped trunk means more than just propping it back up.

Cut for Success

I woman-handled all 5 of them off the top of the Cage Match and lined them up in the yard.  Okay, here is the important part, where to cut.  You want new roots.  The best place to get these is where the head, the leafy part, meets the stem, the trunk part.  I’ve had zero luck cutting off the trunk at the root on these and regrowing a new tree. Because these are leafy clusters, the plants next to it take over.

I personally did not want to start with the bushy leaf area.  I wanted to start with the trees, and I wanted them to be stable.  Leaving a portion of the trunk, I planted these up on the stem instead of burying the first couple rows of the head which I know produces the bushy area.  I also cut off all but the few top leaves and the new sprout leaf.  We want the plant producing roots, not sending its energy to keep dying leaves alive.

Replanting

Since these are tropical, I dug a hole in my yard sand because tropicals grow in sand.  I added a small helping of garden compost and some basic neutral fertilizer.  You have to be careful about adding too much compost.  You want to give it nutrients, but it is a tropical plant.  It needs very sandy soil to grow.  Mix, mix, mix, until it feels just like sand.  Check out the picture, I’m not exaggerating, its sand.

I coated the end of the stem, up the sides, with a powdered root booster and stuck it upright in the hole.  Since we used all our back-up 2 x 4s to stabilize the Hong Kong Orchid tree and you can’t get building supplies after a storm, I used branches I cut from the South American tree to tripod the stems at the bottom.  While I didn’t know if this would work when I started, they are super stable.

Then, the packing of dirt.  Yes, very very important.  Pack all around the stem.  Air pockets lead to rot, not new root growth.  They also make the tree unstable. Pack the dirt (a.k.a. sand) in 3 – 6 inch lifts, meaning only add a few inches at a time to the hole, pack, do it again until it’s full.  I top the whole area off with their own dead leaves to simulate their natural mulch.

Growing Tropical

I’m going to pause for a moment to discuss tropical plants.  When you see landscaped Florida, it is very different from natural Florida.  Native tropical plants and trees seed themselves in sand.  They drop leaves, fruit branches, particulates, and all sorts of stuff on the ground all around itself creating its own compost where other vegetation seeds.  The layers of dried fronds/leaves from palms act as the carbon part of this natural composting, locking everything into the ground with a layer of dried fronds on top.

Landscaped Florida basically removes anything that drops from the trees adding fertilizers, soil supplements, and usually a wood chip or pine needle mulch.  Our Garden has both landscaped Florida and natural Florida elements to it.  We try to create a natural Florida composting environment for our tropical plants and trees while keeping a clean, more landscaped, feel.  It involves a great deal of packing whatever falls from the trees in the beds around their trunks. 

Mimic Nature

Since these trees are new to this area, the soil does not have what it needs to grow already in place. Adding compost to the new roots is good, but planning for the future is better.

I artificially created this for the trees by layering a small amount the green and a large amount dried fronds as compost around the trunk. You want to start with the dried leaves on the ground as to not have rotting vegetation directly on top of where you are trying to grow new roots. It’s the tropical version of composting in place. While composting in place generally does not have plants growing in the active compost bed, tropical plants do this naturally, all year.

Placing cut trunk sections as a border, I finished off the area. These will breakdown quicker than I’d like for a border being fibrous, but they’ll look nice and hold everything in place for a bit while they add much needed nutrients into the soil.       

Chances are Good, Take a Really Long Time to Give Up On It

Rerooting a plant is always a tricky proposition.  While tropicals are known for rerooting, spreading out by any means really, it’s never a sure thing.  Sometimes they die.  Roots never emerge, trunk rots, leaves start rotting or drying in place. Or they don’t and just look really dead for a long time. I can’t say enough, practice patience. I wait until after a full rainy season has passed before even deciding. Finding a similar location or even planting it in the same one doesn’t always work, but it usually helps.  

Our New Locations

The White Birds of Paradise will take full sun, but the place the trees seem to emerge best has partial shade.  Mind you, we can grow huge broccoli plants in our tropical partial shade, even in the winter.  Just saying.  We’re getting 10 hours and 15 minutes of daylight here in the first part of January.  About 6 is all we need to qualify as classic “full sun”.

Two of the trees I planted near the side fence for screening from the road and neighbors.  It’s the area we refer to as the orchard.  They will get some shading from the Scrub Oak and Lumquat tree.  The peach tree next to them will just be their friend as it already has an irrigation head to share, and they are about the same height.  The canopy from both will help shade the ground in the area and keep the temperature of the top sand comfortable for roots.     

The other 3 I planted on the outside of our fence in our natural buffer.  They get plenty of shade from the natural heavily vegetated area and sun being on the edge.  As much as I like keeping this area native, we needed something to hold back the pepper bushes and block any potential view of the other neighbors.  The White Bird of Paradise is perfect for both.

Tropicals Need Water

It should be noted I planted these while we were still getting daily rains.  Tropicals are best planted at the beginning of the rainy season.  Period.  That gives them a few months in their happiest growing season to establish before the drought season when tropicals can struggle.  

Hurricane replants are one of the exceptions.  Because I couldn’t stick these hefty trees in pots, or rather I didn’t have any humungo pots on hand, these were planted at the end of the rainy season.  I had irrigation I could point at the ones by the back side fence, but the ones in the natural buffer area have none.  It’s a cross-your-fingers and hope for the best situation.  They’re currently looking dry.

Traditional Palm Trees

Coconut Palms, King Palms, Queen Palms, and Cabbage Palms are a few varieties people think about when you use the term palm tree.  While there are so many more, these are the ones featured prominently in landscaping especially along streetscapes in Florida.

One of the coolest things about palm trees is they can bend completely sideways and not snap.  Years of palm evolution, bending in storms, make them one of the best storm trees.  We always laugh when video of palms swaying in the wind pop up during storm footage.  We literally see this daily in the summer.  It’s their thing.

While we do have Cabbage and Coconut palms, we have never had one go down.  You might be wondering at this point why The Tropical Grower would cover Righting a Downed Traditional Palm tree if we don’t have one down.  Well, unfortunately, we obtained a snapped one after the storm.

Surprise, You Now Own A Queen Palm

It seems our neighbors had one of their Queen Palms go down in the storm.  At least I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that it went down in the storm, its trunk was cut when I saw it on the fence.  The tree landed leaning over onto their fence, fronds hanging into Our Garden.

The day after the storm My Brother tasked himself with cleaning up all the downed branches along the fence line.  This is our dry detention area and was completely underwater for at least two weeks after Hurricane Ian’s visit.  When My Brother hit the area with the Queen Palm on the fence, I asked him to leave it alone because our neighbor’s fence was loose after the storm, and we didn’t want to knock it over.  Instead, he went over and knocked on their door to see if they needed help getting it off the fence.  No one answered.  About two weeks after the storm, instead of removing it, they simply shoved the whole thing over the fence into Our Garden, crushing everything it landed on.  No good deed, right?  

Demo

My Son kindly came over, cut it up, and placed it where I asked.  The head, fronds, and part of the trunk, all one piece, went to the back side fence.  The trunk sections still live in the giant hurricane pile in front of our house.  The county just started on residential area clean up, the vegetation part.  They already picked up all the debris.  We’ll be one of the last for vegetation where we live, away from the tourists.  

The Queen Palm shoved over the fence was about 20 feet long, the trunk a good 24 inches around.  You can see from the photo above how far it had to fall to hit the fence. Yes, My Son is a very strong man.  This was a big baby.  I could not lift the trunk sections he cut.  I probably would have had to cut them into frisbees if I wanted to lift them.  However, the planting part wasn’t an issue for me to drag around and lift upright.  

Cut For Success

Just like the White Birds of Paradise, the best chance for success in a replant is getting where the head meets the stem into the ground.  While you can successfully grow roots where the trunk snaps, the taller the tree, the harder it is to stabilize.  Remember, they sway in the breeze. Movement will snap off new roots.  It also may decide not to grow roots at the trunk end.  In the palm world, they know to produce new growth at the roots and head.  It’s how they roll.  You can cut the trunk at the rootball still in the ground, hoping a new tree will grow from the rootball, or cut the trunk at the head, hoping for new roots to grow. I recommend both. Asking it to grow someplace it doesn’t already know its supposed to send out new growth is a roll of the dice.  

Practice Patience

I helped a friend whose tree did not want to root where it snapped.  We ended up cutting it back to the head after several months of no new root growth and replanting. It lived.  Watch the head.  If it doesn’t start showing signs of life, you may need to cut back the trunk further and try again, but practice patience. Remember, it will go much slower if you aren’t in the rainy season, and plants will sacrifice everything but the blooms/fruit and roots in that order to survive. If you’re rerooting, you want all the energy to go to roots. Browning leaves, shriveling a bit should be expected. If it starts to truly die, not just look sad, trimming back to the head is probably in order. Some trees just don’t recover.

Dress, Prop, and Stabilize – Don’t Forget to Pack the Dirt

My Son left a section of the trunk attached for me to bury for stabilization.  A tree definitely won’t reestablish itself if it keeps falling over.  I also trimmed back the fronds, leaving only the newest two.  You want the tree to focus on roots, not sending its energy to keep fronds that are going to die anyway alive.  

I followed the same steps as the White Bird of Paradise.  I dug a sand hole, added a small amount of compost and fertilizer, sprinkled the end with powdered root fertilizer, and stabilized it with a small tripod of branches.  Then, I packed the sand in small lifts around the trunk, supports, and stem, making sure no air pockets were around the trunk.  I covered the whole planting area with the cut up fronds for a natural compost and mulch, pointing an irrigation head at it. Throwing a few of the White Bird of Paradise trunks to define the bed, I lined it with Oyster Plants My Brother just brought over for me from his yard. These have to be confined and cutback regularly, but I’m excited to grow them in Our Garden.

The Queen Palm stands about 9 feet tall, replanted.  While I can tell it’s struggling a bit as the fronds look slightly drier than super happy, it seems to be doing fine.  I fully expect to be trimming it after the next rainy season.                  

You Got This!

Palms are resilient in tropical zones.  Standing upright and stabilizing them will go a long way towards growing healthy again.  Watch your plants, see if they’re happy with their new situation.  Do they wobble below the ground? Stake or tripod.  Are they dry?  Tropicals love water.  Make sure they have plenty when stressed, unless the stress was caused by living in standing water.  Then, let them dry out before resuming regular watering.  Practice patience. I usually wait until after the next full rainy season before making any decisions. Take the extra steps of completely replanting only if necessary.  You got this!