Tropical Punch

Our new sago palm!

This is the biggest "baby" offshoot of the main trunk.
Here are a few more of the little sago babies I removed from the trunk and transplanted.


We added our first "palm tree" to our landscape this weekend!

Learning to garden in Louisiana has been fun and interesting. I know Kansas plants, trees and shrubs, but tropical plants have been a mystery to me. I've had to read up on and learn about them by seeing the real things in landscapes.

Curiosity and wonder have plagued me since we moved here about these short, stubby little palm trees that seem to just boldly and gracefully fountain from their centers. I searched my woody plants manuals (tree/shrub dictionaries) and could not find a palm resembling these punctuated little tropical plants. Were they palm trees, tropical plants or a shrub? I wondered. I finally stumbled upon one for sale at Lowe's one day and found it was called a "sago palm"-and the littlest one they had was too expensive to buy for our landscape!

Turns out the "sago palm" is neither a shrub, tree or tropical plant! It's a cycad, a unique species of plants described as "prehistoric." They've been around for a long time and haven't changed much since their beginnings. Interesting, huh?

The sago palm Travis labored to get home is a GEM of a specimen! Probably worth hundreds of dollars, our new sago palm is mature. We estimate, upon researching details on the Internet, that our palm is around twenty years old. It's "trunk" is about about 2' tall. Research revealed sago's grow in trunk height a mere 1 foot per 10 years. I had never seen one with a trunk!

The MOST amazing thing, is that the sago palm was FREE. ADM has been in the process of buying out homes from citizens near the elevators that are annoyed from noise and grain dust. The houses are being demolished and the land leveled. I casually asked Travis, "Are there any plants we might be able to dig up and bring to our yard before they're destroyed?" He was a little hesitant (it was an out-of-his way honey-do request) but said he would go look for me.

He called me the day after and asked me if I wanted a sago palm. I said, YES! He was a bit confused by my enthusiasm. To Travis it was just a plant he wasn't sure I wanted. To me, it was a blessing from God! The palm was packed into a too-small plastic pot. Travis cut it off and brought it home bare-root.

He got home after dark and told me to come outside. He shined a flashlight on the palm and I was speechless. WOW, I was thinking. Then I looked at Travis and asked, "Has the person who left this had a chance to come get it?" Travis said, "Plenty of time. She came and got lots of her other plants, but left this." I couldn't imagine someone just leaving it behind.

The next day (Saturday), the sun revealed what I hadn't noticed by flashlight- little "baby" sago palms! The "babies" were offshoots of the main stem and some were even attached at a below-ground level.

I carefully removed each one of the babies from the big plant and put them in a separate box-eleven in all! The "branches" are VERY sharp, so we very carefully picked the big palm up by the trunk and took it to its new place. It's now front-and-center in the front bed. All the babies are now hanging out in pots in the backyard so I can nurse them to growth.

Thanks God and Travis!