Trimming the Palm Tree
The Mexican Fan Palm is a native palm tree that comes from Baja California and the Sonoran Desert. That means it is an indigenous plant more or less and not something that was imported from Madagascar or some such exotic place. Things grow so well in this 9-10-rated climate zone that it is not surprising that the Mexican Fan Palm thrives just a few miles north of its native habitat. It is equally not surprising that every type and manner of exotic non-native plant has been brought here and generally does well too. Both the horticulturalist and the arborist that I have hired to consult me over the past few years have shown a specific disdain for the lowly Mexican Fan Palm. They think of it as a sort of invasive weed that is less admired and more avoided. I am not a great fan of palm trees (note the obvious pun), but that is because I always assumed that they were imported from somewhere like Morocco and were transplanted from some tropical oasis. Finding out that they are native to this area has made me respect them more even though I do not want to particularly live in the midst of a tropical oasis or something that looks like a transplanted version of that.
I have planted only two sets of palms since I came to this hilltop, and both of them were groupings of Pygmy Date Palms that I positioned around the games area on the front of the property. I got that idea from a McDonald’s drive-through that looked particularly nicely landscaped, strangely enough. What I liked about them was the dwarf feature that would keep them small and sort of go with the miniature golfing theme of the games area. I was NOT trying to recreate a tropical oasis. Those Pygmy Date Palms are not indigenous plants, but rather are native to Southeast Asia so I was also not trying to stay in the California moment in my artificial games amusement area for the children. By my best count, I have five Mexican Fan Palms on my property, four of which I suspect were purposefully planted by the previous owners and one of which I think just propagated on its own where it is. The most notable two palms are the two next to each other on the corner of the garage between the garage and the house. They rise up well above the height of the house and garage and are a visible marker of the property from the highway below. I assume they were a landscaping adornment intentionally planted there for effect. When I see the twin palms, I know I am close to home. There are another two that ate set more or less on the corners of the property at the North and South ends of it along the front road. Those I assume were put there to demarcate the property. The fifth Mexican Fan Palm is one that is the youngest of the five (the twins are the tallest at perhaps 40 feet and corner stakes are perhaps 25 feet) and stand about ten feet tall on the top of the rocky outcropping on the front of the property. That outcropping is a lovely and natural rocky knoll with a huge Matterhorn-shaped boulder at it’s enter that rises about thirty feet into the air. The Mexican Fan Palm is artistically (though randomly, I think) set amongst the rocks to its side and, I think, looks perfectly at home in that rugged setting.
Mexican Fan Palms supposedly grow up to three feet per year, but I suspect that would apply to the two mid-sized ones and that the twins grow more slowly as they reach their natural apogee and the rocky top one perhaps grows about a foot or two a year at its young age. There will come a day when the small one will perhaps stick out off that rocky outcropping too much to look good. I suspect the “feather in the cap” look won’t be great, but we are long ways away from that at this point. I will reassess it in another five years and see if it bothers me. I am told that Mexican Fan Palms live for up to 500 years, so I think I am good on all five assuming the rocky top one does not get too obnoxious in its placement.
There are many Mexican Fan Palms here and there in this area and you see them often clustered around homes in what is clearly an intentional landscaping design approach, but you also see them randomly in large undeveloped swaths of land on the hillsides and along the road at what are clearly unplanned spots. I have watched my palms enough to know that they throw off large seed pod bunches that look like miniature grapes, but in huge groupings the size of banana bunches (meaning the entire banana bunch from the tree that can be up to five feet long and about two feet wide). Those pea-sized seeds spread everywhere and roll around the driveway and into every nook and cranny imaginable. I see Mother Nature doing her thing by having those little fan palm leaves poking up through the ground and around the mulch and gravel everywhere. I am constantly pulling them up to avoid having a forrest of Mexican Fan Palms, and those buggers are holding on for dear life. I understand why a horticulturalist would call them invasive because they sure do like to propagate. I’m also sure the odds of survival are slim, which is why there are damn many of them spreading here and there. But that one up on the rocky hill was a keeper and once it gets to a certain size, i guess its onward to its 500 years.
The big difference between what I will call cultivated versus wild Mexican Fan Palms can be seen in their trunks, or, more accurately, the covering over their trunks. The growth pattern of the tree is that the lower palm fronds die and bend downward while the newer growth pushes upward. So a palm that has not been trimmed for several years looks like it has a cowl collar of dead palm fronds around its long neck. Well-tended Mexican Fan Palms look more like a straw that has a fountain of green fronds at the top. It is a nice clean look. The wild Mexican Fan Palms that have never been trimmed have a fur-covered trunk all the way down almost to the base and actually have the look of a much larger and sturdier tree than really hides under all of those dead fronds hugging the trunk. It makes me wonder weather it is healthier for the tree to have an unobstructed trunk or a well-shielded trunk. It would be interesting to see if that au-naturelle look makes the tree grow faster or slower.
Today, Joventino is trimming the twin palms. He regularly does the same with the other three on the property, but the twins, being higher, require a practices approach to pruning. He gets up on top of the garage using his ladder and then uses his extended pruning pole to trim off all the dead fronds and, importantly (especially to me, who has to clean up the droppings and pull the baby palms) to trim off the seed pod stems. What would be a two-day project for me that I would have to write five stories about is less than a two-hour chore for Joventino that he handles in due course in the midst of his ten-hour work day. I will now drive around the neighborhood admiring my neatly trimmed palms and casting aspersions on those who have not trimmed their palms lately. I like my indigenous Mexican Fan Palms, but I like them trimmed and looking fresh, so who knows what that says about me.