Last post .. The palm is one we saw growing in a neighbourhood in the Santa Barbara area - but there are so many kinds of palms, I have no idea what this one is. The second picture is of a plant growing in the Pismo Beach area, in a garden about 100 meters from the beach. Thanks again for your help, folks.
Thank you for your responses, Ron and Junglekeeper. I'm still not certain which palm it is but of the two you have suggested, I'd go with the Wodyetia bifurcata, Foxtail Palm rather than the Roystonea, mainly because the Roystonea fruit is described as being "single-seeded, about 13 millimetres (0.5 in) long and 10 mm (0.4 in) wide" Roystonea borinquena - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia while the fruit of Wodyetia bifurcate is said to be "approximately 1 1⁄4 inches wide and 2 1⁄4 inches long ..." www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/OF-45.pdf The fruits I saw were clearly over 1" long. Cached Similar
Just to be clear, I know almost nothing about palms, but I've been so attracted to foxtail palms in Hawaii because of the bushiness of the leaves, with the leaflets so densely circling the leaf stem that you can't see the stem [edited - see posting #11; I'm not sure this is true]. The Floridata Wodyetia bifurcata page describes it as "appearing like a bottlebrush or the tail of a fox", which is what is so unusual and appealing. In your photo, it's even hard to tell that the leaflets circle the stem, though it sounds like you're saying they do, but the leaf stem at the upper left is so clearly visible as to give the impression that the leaflets are in a single plane, even though they may not all be so. For Roystonea, Wikipedia says "[Leaflets] are arranged in two or three planes along the rachis. Many authors have reported that the leaves R. oleracea are arranged in a single plane, but American botanist Scott Zona reported that this is not the case." Do you have a photo of the whole tree?
Regrettably, no I do not, I have just the one .. although the original is mugh higher resolution, if that helps; I have made a copy of the original photo available here: https://app.box.com/s/c4nmxj05kh0uh7zbxrqfd9mvddbi9m8z When in Santa Barbara, we simply drove to an interesting neighbourhood, parked the car and wandered up and down streets, looking at interesting houses, gardens and plants. Clearly, I may have to go back although I can certainly think of worse fates because Santa Barbara is beautiful.
Hah! In a city I'm not familiar with, where I was six months ago, on a street I'd never seen before .. you're not asking much, are you? ;-) But as it happens, yes I can. It was right in front of the Santa Barbara Mormon Church Google Maps and you can see that palm in the picture in front of their church, at 169 E Los Olivos Street. You can look at the attached picture or go through the Google picture. Thanks for looking into this.
That does not seem to be entirely correct. Here are some photos of trees ID'd on the U of H campus map as Wodyetia bifurcata. You can see the midrib of one of the leaves easily in the second photo. Here is an unidentified Kapahulu neighbourhood tree that I assumed is Wodyetia. Again, second photo, the rachis is very clear. In the third photo, it looks like the leaflets don't actually whorl around the rachis but rather twist to appear to do so. I'm going back to my corner, after saying that I don't think the area on the trunk just below the leaves on the California tree looks like these.
What I've noticed is that the W. has a smooth green section of trunk covering below the fronds, before the bare trunk begins. The R. may not have this.
