Sun-Sentinel

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Nonnative coconut palms banned at the beach

Michael Turnbell

TRANSPORTATION COLUMNIST

September 23, 2007

Edited: 09/24/2007 at 07:31 AM by ww

DUH

What are they going to plant that's "native" -Cabbage palms? That will look lovely.

Ahh the ratty canopy, the weathered boots hanging half decayed in the sunshine. The salt burned fronds that seem to whisper- I'm dying of some sort of fungal issue.. the cooling 2 feet of shade..

I guess you could try Bucaneer Palms- that'll be economical hahaha

There's a good argument to say that Coconut Palms are "native" to anywhere there is a coastline and the climate for them to sprout and grow.. as they have the ability to float on the sea and set up shop anywhere they happen to land.

"Storey said the city chose the cabbage palm because it looked the best out of the four choices and provided the most shade"

read: "the city chose the cabbage palm because (it's common as nails, costs next to nothing and was the cheapest way to cut corners)"

.......somebody need Buccaneer palms......$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I like cabbage palms when planted en masse AND when they aren't pruned to death.  AIA around Floridana Beach would look utterly different without its cabbages, not to mention some of those gorgeous palm-lined streams in NE Florida.  The main problem with coconuts really seems to be the big nuts.

The evidence is pointing strongly to no coconuts in the Caribbean or the Atlantic coast of Africa before the Europeans spread them around. 

scientific paper from Genome, 2000. 

The city of Satellite Beach recently has been planting large numbers of cabbage palms. I hope they don't plan on pruning them back (butchering) like they do on PAFB. This requires lots of resources (manpower, fuel, equipment, hauling) and results in sickly looking palm. Just collecting fallen fronds on these palms will be a huge cost to the city. While no tree is maintenance free there are other alternatives that offer more shade and less maintenance. I would have more Live Oaks, at least for interior areas.

Thats probably true- from what I've heard, there werent any coconut palms on the Florida coasts until some ships started getting wrecked spilling the nuts off the coastline. supposedly that's where "palm beach" got its name

I'm just not a big cabbage palm fan, although I do like Buccaneer and Coccothrinax palms.

But I could see people actually attempting to steal buccaneers, and the thatch/silver palms aren't quite what people dream of in an idyllic beach scene.

It must be they are worried about people getting bonked on the head?

What about Royals or well maintained Acoelorraphe wrightii


from Floridata.com:

"The beautiful Royal is readily available in areas where it can be grown. With a little care (water and fertilizer) this palm will reward with fast growth that is rare for a palm. Being tolerant of salt drift, Royal Palms will grow near salt water and on the beach if set back from the first line of dunes."

I can't recall seeing one on a beach myself.. do they get too salt burned?

Edited: 09/24/2007 at 07:53 PM by paddleout

Raelin Storey doesn't sound like a Timucuan name. Maybe she should go back where she is from.

Also, condominiums aren't native to Florida shoreline. Lets bulldoze those concrete structures.

Sorry, its late, I'm tired, and stricken with some bad humor.

Interesting story. Pretty dumb if you ask me. So they say Coconut Palms are not native to the beach?!? Eh? Don't people know the seed floats anywhere the ocean currents will take them? Sort of how planes, trains, and automobiles transport people away from their native habitat?

Here is a interesting fact that is totally unrelated to this topic, at one time camels roamed Florida.
http://paleoenterprises.com/moreinfo.htm

Coconut palms may not have been native given our past climate,
but they seem to be well adapted to our current and future one.

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

Coconuts didn't make it to the Atlantic (including west Africa) until Europeans schlepped the nuts.  They seem to have been late-comers to Florida, though you'd think the lighthouse at Cape Florida would have had them early on.  The State Park has a nice bunch of them at the lighthouse.

They are problematic in Florida because of their susceptibility to lethal yellowing.  This weekend, Paul Craft (who should know) mentioned that the disease is making a comeback, but for some reason isn't bothering the coconuts.

Daniel Janzen, years ago, noticed that some Costa Rican trees had fruits ideally suited to be eaten by horses.  In fact, horses eat them.  So he wondered about what happened during the 10,000 year gap between extinction of native horses and arrival of Spanish ones.  I don't remember seeing a camel at the Florida Museum of Natural History, but they originated in the Americas.  It would figure that Florida had them. 

Hey WW, and they say nobody surfed Pipeline or Waimea until the Californians arrived in Hawaia....

I don't believe it.

At one time Florida was attached to Africa, which was attached to India, which was attached to the Elbow bone.... (i.e. Gwandolan)

So...how far back in history do we want to go and say what is native and what is not?

At one time Florida had no plants on it as it was under water...just about 6,000 years ago according to the bible and the great flood....

Who do we believe?

I believe the coconut is a native to planet Earth and should be allowed to live where ever it can!

Here is a good case that it is not native to Florida:

"Columbus found tall palms on the north coast of Cuba in 1492 and, anxious to convince sceptics that he had reached Asia, claimed that the palms had large nuts "of the kind belonging to India". At that time the coconut was known as nux Indica and had been described by Europeans, such as Marco Polo, who had travelled overland to Asia. It is now considered that the coconut did not reach the shores of the Atlantic and the Caribbean until after Vasco da Gama returned from East Africa in 1499. Possibly, coconuts from Mozambique were established by the Portuguese on the islands of Santiago or Goree on the Cape Verde coast of West Africa. From there they were certainly taken to Puerto Rico in 1549 and probably to Jamaica and other territories under Spanish control. By the time that Sloane came to Jamaica in 1687 he found that coconuts were common here and in other Caribbean islands in the "drier and sandy places". When Captain Bligh brought breadfruit from Tahiti in 1793 he also carried some coconut seedlings. Two were intended for the botanic garden at Bath and two for Spring Garden in Liguanea. Unlike breadfruit plants, coconut seedlings were not a novelty. Even if their origins were exotic the palms from Tahiti could not have been sufficiently different in habit, fruit shape, size or colour, to be memorable. As the result of recent research it is now known that the coconuts in Tahiti and Jamaica have many points of similarity, including susceptibility to lethal yellowing disease. If any Tahiti progeny still exist they will be impossible to identify and will soon succumb to the disease. "
http://www.geocities.com/harrieshc/jamaica.htm

I just don't see what trouble it could really cause.

It's not like there arent coconut palms all over S FL already.

Obviously birds don't eat and spread the seeds.. so what could really happen?

BEWARE:
Of the 25 year freeze, or 50 year, or 100 year. Even in this day and age of global warming, we will still likely get a freakish cold front one year soon. Remember your history and you know you are taking a gamble with these tropical beauties.
Mine are looking so pretty right now, just about steady enough to swing the hammock b/n them. I hope this isn't the year of the hard hard freeze.

Dave those J.R. pups are so adorable, I'm coming over soon to visit. My GF is gone and I need some puppy love.

I swear if we do have that freeze this year, I'll be out there with a smudge pot and a hot air blower - I LOVE my coconuts and they only have a year or so till they're hammockable...

-------------------------
[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. ~Pat Robertson

we're talking about S. Florida here though.. no freezes down there

and by the way global warming's going, I'm thinking we'll be in zone 11 by 2010

I'm old enough to remember the 1989 disaster. The butias in my Jacksonville yard behaved as if nothing had happened, despite everything being covered with ice for two days. Brevard lost most of its royals and a fair number of queens. Even Vero lost a lot of royals. I'm trying quite a bit of more tender stuff in my Vero yard but trying to keep a backbone of reliably hardy plants.

I heard there were alot of Australian Pines along the beach in Melbourne Beach, and '89 wiped them out.

'89 killed gumbo limbos in Cocoa Beach, where they're native. I think it happened because the hammocks had been cleared and a few gumbos left out in the open.

OVER Trimming palms seems to be a thing now with tree trimmers. WHAT'S UP!?

They look like crap. I call 'em "carrot topped". Not to mention you get thinned out trunks, small growth, disease and palm weavels can then tear tham apart.

We ought to sign a petition that tree trimmers cannot trim more than is necessary.

Why have a palm when you're gonna ruin it?

They went up to Jetty park Actually all over Brevard, Merritt Is was thick with them, so were the spoil islands in the lagoons...nice shade and the sound of the wind blowing through the m was so peaceful. The cones were a pain in the feet though. I still miss them though.