Wodyetia bifurcata Seeds | Foxtail Palm
LATIN NAME: Wodyetia bifurcata
COMMON NAME: Foxtail Palm
Plant Profile
For most of botanical history the foxtail palm was unknown to science, living quietly in a pocket of granite a short distance inland from Cape Melville in far north Queensland. In 1978 a countryman from that area, whose name is preserved in the genus itself, brought seeds and material out and handed them to a botanist. The plant that had been invisible to every collector who sailed past the cape turned out to be not merely a new species but a new genus.
The genus holds exactly one species, confined to a small area of boulder-strewn slopes and gullies around the cape, growing in skeletal soil among granite blocks with the sea not far away. It is a palm of the dry tropical fringe rather than of rainforest: it takes full sun, wind and salt, and it survives on rainfall that arrives in a single wet season.
The ordinary pinnate palm leaf carries its leaflets in neat opposite pairs. The foxtail palm breaks that pattern: its leaflets are held in whorls of several around the rachis, so each arching frond looks like a fox’s brush. The crown is small and dense above a smooth green crownshaft, and the dead fronds shed cleanly without being cut. The trunk is grey and ringed, and unmistakably single.
The fruit is a small ovoid drupe, green at first and ripening to a warm orange-red through the accumulation of carotenoid pigments, principally beta-carotene, in the fleshy mesocarp. Birds take the fruit and drop the stone, which is the plant’s main dispersal mechanism in the wild.
Once the palm was described it spread through the nursery trade with extraordinary speed, and wild seed was stripped from Cape Melville in the rush. That history is why the species now features in conservation-genetic work, comparing the narrow natural population with the very broad gene pool in gardens from Queensland to Florida.
Science & Biotechnology
Palms are awkward subjects for nursery research: they have a single growing point, they transplant badly, and the great ornamentals cannot be bulked vegetatively without cloning. Foxtail palm has become a working subject for both problems. Excising the zygotic embryo from the seed and raising it on a sterile medium bypasses the slow, uneven performance of whole seed in the tray. Inflorescence and embryo explants have also been pushed through somatic embryogenesis, the callus route by which a palm can in principle be multiplied without losing its identity.
Uses & Benefits
Two palms of that corner of Australia are often grown together. The Normanby palm has broader, more leathery leaflets in flat ranks and a heavier crown; the foxtail palm has the whorled, fine leaflets and a lighter, arching head. Its creamy flowers are borne in long clusters below the crown, with male and female flowers on one inflorescence and the males shedding first, so a tree cannot pollinate itself within a single cluster.
The foxtail palm is used as a vertical accent, an avenue tree, a courtyard specimen and a poolside subject, on the strength of a self-cleaning crownshaft and an appetite for sun. It wants a footprint of about three metres, more where two crowns will touch, and it reads best against a plain wall or a dark hedge.
Because it tolerates salt wind and poor, thin soil, it suits coastal plantings and exposed frontages. In a container it stays compact for years and can be moved under cover for the coldest part of the year, which is how growers in marginal climates keep a mature-looking specimen.
Growing from Seed
Use a mix of two parts coarse washed sand, one part sieved compost and one part fine pine bark, in a deep pot or a tall bag rather than a shallow tray, because the seedling sends a single heavy radicle straight down and resents being turned. Press each seed on its side into the surface and cover it with about its own depth of mix. Warmth and steady moisture matter more than light at this stage, so a covered propagator gives the most even results.
Choose a container at least twice the depth of the seed and never let it stand in a saucer of water. Once the first frond opens, move the plant to full sun in stages over a couple of seasons, and pot on before the roots coil at the base.
Water generously in the growing season and let the surface dry between soakings; feed with a slow-release palm fertiliser carrying magnesium and trace elements, since palms on sand yellow quickly without them. In cold districts keep container plants above a cool minimum and reduce water sharply in the dormant season, because a cold wet root ball is the fastest way to lose a young palm.
Our Take
The foxtail palm is the rare case of a plant that went from unknown to ubiquitous inside one lifetime, and it remains among the best palms for a hot, sunny garden. Grow it with other robust palm stock such as the California fan palm, the softer queen palm, or the cold-hardy windmill palm, and you can build a whole planting around three leaf textures.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Foxtail Palm often pair it with these related subjects: