Phoenix roebelenii Seeds | Pygmy Date Palm
LATIN NAME: Phoenix roebelenii
COMMON NAME: Pygmy Date Palm
Plant Profile
Carl Roebelen was a German collector who worked the forests of Southeast Asia for European nurseries, and the palm that carries his name came back from the rocky banks of the middle Mekong in Laos. It was described from cultivated plants, which is unusual for a palm of such limited wild range, and it has been a garden subject ever since. The plant in the trade today is almost always a container specimen or a patio tree, and it remains one of the very few date palms that can be grown to flowering size on a windowsill.
Almost every species in Phoenix is single-stemmed: the true date palm, the Canary Island date palm and the Indian date palm all build one trunk and stay with it. The pygmy date palm breaks the rule, producing basal offshoots so that a mature plant becomes a cluster of stems of different ages, each one wrapped in the persistent stubs of old leaf bases. Growth is slow, and a well-grown specimen in a pot may take many years to reach two metres. The fronds are pinnate and arching, held in a dense crown that gives the plant its soft outline.
Run a finger along the lower part of a frond and you find the genus’s other signature. The lowest leaflets are transformed into stiff, needle-sharp spines, the acanthophylls, which stand out from the rachis at an angle. The leaflet arrangement is induplicate, each blade folded into a shallow V with the fold facing upward, and that detail, together with the spines, separates Phoenix from the other feather palms at a glance.
The genus is dioecious. Male and female flowers are borne on separate plants, in branched clusters that emerge among the fronds, and only a female that has been pollinated will carry the small dark fruits. In a garden the fruit is a curiosity rather than a crop, but the seed it yields is perfectly capable of producing a new plant.
Science & Biotechnology
Because the sexes are separate plants, Phoenix became the model for studying sex determination in palms, and work on the true date palm identified a sex-linked region on one chromosome that controls whether a seedling becomes male or female. The genus carries thirty-six chromosomes and its karyotype is compact and stable, which is why so much of what is known about palm sex and about palm inheritance comes from these species.
Palms are the hardest major plant group to multiply in the laboratory. The shoot apex is a single growing point buried deep in the crown, its cells lose their capacity to divide once they mature, and the embryo is tiny. Tissue culture of Phoenix has nevertheless been solved, mostly for the date palm industry, where somatic embryogenesis from immature embryos and from inflorescence tissue now produces clonal lines on a large scale. The pygmy date palm is multiplied the same way when a nursery wants uniform clumping plants, because seed gives variable offspring and a female parent cannot be identified until the plant flowers.
Uses & Benefits
This is the palm sold in pairs to stand either side of a doorway, and it is a good choice for that job: it tolerates the dry air of a heated room better than most palms, holds its colour in low light, and stays compact for years. Indoors it wants the brightest spot available without direct midday sun. Outdoors it is planted in frost-free gardens as a specimen, and its fronds are cut for floristry as a dark green framework in arrangements. The small fruits are not a commercial date and are best left to the birds.
Nursery crosses between the pygmy date palm and its larger relatives circulate in the landscape trade, grown for the compact crown of this species combined with the vigour and cold tolerance of the bigger date palms.
Growing from Seed
Strip the flesh from the seed, rinse it well and sow it while it is fresh, one or two centimetres deep in a mix of two parts peat-free potting compost and one part coarse perlite or grit. Palm seed wants warmth and steady moisture, so stand the pot in a propagator or on a warm shelf, and keep the compost damp but never wet enough to rot the kernel. The seedling pushes a single strap-shaped leaf first, then a second, and only then begins to cut its leaves into leaflets. Move each plant into its own pot when the first divided leaf has hardened.
Palms need potassium more than they need nitrogen, and a shortage shows as translucent flecks on the older leaflets followed by frizzled, brown-tipped leaf ends, so use a palm fertiliser with trace elements rather than a general houseplant feed. Water thoroughly and then let the top of the compost dry a little, and never stand the pot in a saucer of water. Repot when roots appear at the drainage holes, in spring, into a pot only a size larger. Keep the plant above about ten degrees in winter and out of cold draughts.
Indoor specimens in dry, warm rooms are the classic target of red spider mite, which shows as pale stippling on the upper leaflet surface; raise the humidity and treat promptly. Mealybug and scale settle in the leaf axils and along the rachis. Outdoors in the tropics, palm weevils and the large palm borer can tunnel into the crown,
Our Take
A pygmy date palm is the best-value small palm for a pot, and its clumping habit means a single seed can give you a whole container specimen. For a larger-scale planting in a frost-free garden, look at the Canary Island date palm, and where a trunking, fruiting palm is wanted, the true date palm is the one to raise from seed. Indoors, the butterfly palm is a good companion for a bright room.
Related Reading
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