Ponytail Palms and other Beaucarnea/Nolina species

http://www.bihrmann.com/caudiciforms/subs/bea-rec-sub.asp

Beaucarnea recurvata

#1 20-yr-old container-grown specimen.
#2 Second plant. New growth after having crown cut 3 months earlier.

 

http://www.bihrmann.com/caudiciforms/subs/cal-hoo-sub.asp

A young Calibanus hookeri

 

What an interesting plant Mark....thanks alot (sarcasm) now I'll have to hunt it down because I want it ;)

Ed

 

20 Year old garden grown specimen (planted 1988)
1st pics taken Dec 2003 when this pony tail was in our back yard.
Pony tail relocated to front yard in 2005 which did result in some branches being lost.
2nd pic taken March 2007 when again flowering.
3rd pic taken this morning (Jan 28, 2008)

This pony-tail flowers yearly and after each flowering it then divides.
It now has over 30 branches and has just finished flowering from 12 heads.
Each head is covered in thousands of tiny white flowers which the bees love.
The tiny flowers fall off and the heads are fairly bare now after starting to flower in early December. I will cut off these 12 bare heads and then those branches will divide next season into 3 or 4 new branches from where each head was cut.

The 4th and last pony tail pictures are of another ( 1 of 3 pony tails) which we have that also produced large pods but instead these pods contain thousands of seeds. Each seed is in its own leaf shape outer that is pale green with a tinge of pale red/pink. Other pictures are me harvesting the 12 or so seed pods from these 3 pony tails. I now have collected thousands of seeds and some that fell naturally before I cut off the seed pods have already taken root around the parent pony tail.

 

Cool Pictures:

I have a 20 year old ponytail that is about 8 ft tall. It almost reaches the ceiling. I had been wondering if I could cut the top off. Thanks to another link here, where others have done it, with success, I'm going to give it a try.
I was wondering if you would seed me some of your seeds?

suzyq

 

Hello from Norway, here's my 20 year old ponytail. Compared to Debham's above it's rather pathetic, it's below 3 ft and with one small crown, but I've at least managed to keep it alive for all these years.

Edit: Sorry, I posted a wrong picture.

 

Well, here it is...

 

I lifted it out of the pot, poor thing. The soil was completely gone, it was one solid ball of roots, they had even grown out through the bottom of the pot. I transferred it into a pot of roughly double size. I'll post back in September with a new pic. The height now is 75 cm. from the soil to the top.

 

19 Flowering heads in 2010

 

Here is a Beaucarnea recurvata in Queen Kapiolani Park in Waikiki, Hawaii.