Hey I just got this lot of palms, 5 of them for about $400. Can anyone let me know if they think I got a good deal?
#1 and #3 appear to be Beaucarnea recurvata, Ponytail and Cycas revoluta, Sago Palm, respectively. They are not true palms.
Here are some better shots and newer palms, the 3 finger palm the gentlemen told me these are very old.. really would like to know what kind these are.
so .. Picture 2 are Sago Palms - Cycas revoluta - ( http://www.rhapisgardens.com/sagos/ ) Picture 4 and 5 are Ponytail Palms - Beaucarnea recurvata (http://www.floridata.com/ref/B/beau_rec.cfm) what about Picture 1 and 6? are they Beaucarnea recurvata (Ponytails) as well? how much do these go for in the states? TIA
I think only photo #4 in the second batch of images is a Ponytail. Some, if not all, of rest may be cycads. You may want to have a look through the photo gallery at The Cycad Society.
Thank you, I found a good book on them at Amazon The Cycads by Loran M. Whitelock (Hardcover - May 1, 2002) I really like the look of these, very prehistoric looking at wild shapes. I never saw anything like them in Florida. Downside is I know they are pulling them from the wild, and it's probably not a good thing they are. I can't seem to find any Date Palms in Thailand.
I don't think Date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) grow very well in humid tropics. A dry semi desert area is where date palms grow best and commercial date production is. Cheers, LPN.
The tall cycads are probably Cycas pectinata, the small ones with swollen base (normally subterranean), C. siamensis. There are 2 pics of Beaucarnea recurvata.
Cycas pectinata and Cycas siamensis both on the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable species. If these are plants pulled from the wild, you may have gotten a good deal, but the rest of the world (and future generations) have lost.
On IUCN Red List .... as are all cycad species, whether common or rare. I would not get in quite so much of a moral panic. These are two of the most widely distributed cycads of southeast Asia, rangeing over a lot of rugged and sparsely inhabited country. It's true that in some more accessible areas they are being exploited as landscape plants, even to the extent that specimens over a certain size are locally eliminated, but I doubt that there is even the slightest threat of the species' extinction. In Thailand at least they are common enough in some quite large national parks. Also, and I realise this is not necessarily relevant to nature conservation, the survival rate of transplanted Cycas spp. in the tropics is very high and they are very long-lived.
