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Why was the Montgomery palm named after an accountant? The Montgomery palm (Veitchia arecina) was named for Colonel Robert Hiester Montgomery (1872-1953). His formal education stopped at age fourteen, but he went on to become Columbia University’s first accounting professor, the author of the first American book on auditing, a co-founder of Pricewaterhousecoopers. and the first honoree of the Accounting Hall of Fame. His other passion was palms, and he was the founder of Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami, which he named for his friend David Fairchild, a famous plant explorer.
How can you identify the Montgomery palm? Look for A SOLITARY PALM (more rarely planted as a triple) with a SLENDER GRAY TRUNK, holding ONLY 8–10 VERY DARK-GREEN SEVEN-FOOT FEATHERY FRONDS that are held HORIZONTALLY. Each frond has about a hundred 1.5 inch LEAFLETS AIMED DOWNWARDS. REINS (skinny green strings that dangle down from the leaf area and represent leaf tissue that held the frond folded until it unfurled) are seen. BLACK WOOLLY SCALES are noticeable at the top of the green crownshaft. The FLOWER-FRUIT STALKS are VERY BRANCHED, WHITE, and hold BERRY-LIKE FRUITS, which are red when ripe. Where can you see a Montgomery Palm? Once you get tuned into the appearance of Montgomery palms, you will begin to see these dark-green beauties everywhere. At VR, we have a nice clump of three very tall plants in front of the clubhouse and five smaller specimens in a row between the lap pool and the lake. There are many of them planted at Canyon Town Center. Would a Montgomery palm suit your home landscape? Montgomery palms are a good medium-sized palm to replace the Queen palms that are dying in our neighborhood. Native to Vanuatu, these palms are popular in Florida because of their appearance, moderate drought tolerance, only slight susceptibility to lethal yellowing, and their fast rate of growth (reaching 25–30 feet). They are self-cleaning, meaning the dead fronds fall off by themselves. They work well mixed with other palms because they bring a darker shade of green and a different texture to the mix; Pamela Crawford suggests planting them alongside foxtail and robellini palms in her wonderful gardening book called Easy Gardens for South Florida, which is available from our local library. Do you want to help conserve the Montgomery Palm? Collection of these palms for their edible palm hearts is threatening their existence in the wild; it’s nice to know that you are helping to save this species by planting it here in Florida.
The Valencia Reserve landscaping along Lake Royal Road, Beverly Glen Avenue, and Lyons Road incorporates everglades palms with light green fan-shaped leaves and multiple warm-brown fibrous trunks. They are rare at individual homes because they spread by producing additional trunks, eventually forming expansive twenty-foot-wide clusters. Everglades palms are unusual palms in that they can tolerate standing water, a special quality for adapting to life in the everglades. I usually like to explain how Latin plant names add to the appreciation of the plant, but the Latin name of the everglades palm daunts even me: Acoelorrhaphe wrightii. Florida has eleven native palms (not imported from other countries): everglades/aka paurotis palm, palmetto/aka cabbage palm (the FL state “tree”), royal palm, Florida thatch palm, Key thatch palm (native to the Florida Keys), dwarf palmetto, scrub palm, silver palm, buccaneer palm, needle palm, and saw palmetto. I have only noted the first four in Valencia Reserve. Most of the others can be seen at West Palm Beach’s Mounts Botanical Garden, whIch has an attractive area maintained by the Florida Native Plant Society. In general, native plants are better for the environment than imported plants because they have evolved over thousands of years to support and be supported by the natural world around them. They may also be less work to maintain, since they are adapted to the local climate and soil type. After nurserymen removed too many everglades palms from the everglades, the palms had to be protected by law. Fortunately, their natural numbers are increasing again because legitimate nurseries only sell plants that have been grown from seed or divided off from the base of a cultivated cluster. Look for our native everglades palms; their appearance is enhanced with an underplanting of multicolored shrubs, as seen in the photo above taken alongside the swimming pool parking lot. Consider a visit to Mounts Botanical Garden; it is a fourteen-acre hidden gem composed of twenty-five smaller gardens including a Rose and Fragrance Garden, a Rainbow Garden, a Shade Garden, an Edible Garden, a Butterfly Garden, and, my personal favorite, a Garden of Well-Being. Labeled photos of palms in VR and flowers in Mounts Botanical Garden can be found as slideshows on my blog Botanicaltours.weebly.com . Many palms and plants can also be seen on the VR HOA website under Resources in the Landscaping publication entitled “Plant Identification.” |
Katherine Wagner-Reiss has her botany Certificate from the New York Botanical Garden, where she is a volunteer tour guide.
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