Foxtail palm seeds

I need some advice please. I have over 200 foxtail palms on our property, ranging from 8 to 10 years in age. They are starting to produce seeds now. But... some seem to be too heavy for the tree and the entire bunch will fall off before they're ripe. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can prevent this? I'd really like to get the seeds to go maturity. When the branch falls off, they're usually like the one's in this picture. Not ripened to their nice orange colour which they need to be to be ripe.

Thanks,
Jane

Those do look a bit too immature to be falling off. I've never heard of that happening before. Be interesting to see if anyone else has been having that happen. Mine stay up in the tree a long time and don't fall off until ripe. Maybe too wet a "dry season". You have been getting as lot of rain over that way.

I don't know how easy it is to reach these seeds, but you could just take a ladder if within reach and pluck off half the seeds, easing the weight burden.

Thanks for the feedback. Actually, some of them do suffer from a black rot with subsequent black ants. That I can easily see would be due to moisture. The others though, area mistery. I like to idea of taking some off, that may be one solution. Thanks!

Foxtail comes from the Cape Melville area, a bit out of the wet tropics and into more of a distinct dry season climate. Normanbya normanbyi is sort of like a rainforest version of the Fox Tail and does better with year round wet. But it does prefer more shade when still young. You should give some of those a try.