I have very little knowledge of growing from seeds. I have a Palmetto Palm Tree and would love to learn how to grow them from the seeds. I think I have cut the seeds to soon. I cut them at the end of June and they are still green. I live in South Carolina. Can I dry them and then germinate. I would love to have suggestions and input. Thanks for your help!
Math, in South Carolina, you would mostly have two palms. Could be others, but one of the two you see all over is Serenoa repens, or the relatively low mounding palm that would form an understory in pinewood forests. Other places too, but that's what I see driving down I-95. That's commonly known as palmetto. Prostrate stems or trunks, frequently multiple crowns, comes back very fast after fires. The frond's petiole will have teeth on it. The berries are bright green olive looking things that eventually go orangey, then black when ripe, but still bigger than a raisin. You'd have to get one of those when it's black and ready to fall off. You could plant it then, and wait many months to see it sprout, and then many years to have it form the full crown at maybe ten feet wide and eight feet tall. The other one is Sabal palmetto, or the cabbage palm. This is the one with the upright trunks. Crown looks very similar to Serenoa repens, but there aren't any teeth on the petioles, and the fruits are hard green balls about the size of peas. Those will eventually go black, sometimes with a bit more orange to purple before they get to a mahogany black. If this is the palm you are looking at growing, look all around where they grow. You will see thousands of blades, single green shoots with very definite vertical veins. They'll be coming up in the grass, in the gutter, in the compost, in the flowerpots, in sidewalk cracks, etc. Almost all will die within a year or two, before they start getting anything even remotely looking like a palm crown. If you go for the largest ones of these shoots you can possibly tease it out of the ground and pot it up. There will be a white bulb-like base to the shoot with one or two slim beige roots. If you want to grow this one from seed, again wait until they are black before collecting. And again, wait for years to see a palm that looks like the palm crowns all around you. Green seeds are usually immature seeds and not likely to mature to a point where they can sprout.
