Raphia Species, East African Wine Palm, Madagascar Raphia Palm, Raffia Palm

This spectacular palm is a "must have" for any palm collector with a spacious garden. It is difficult to find a palm with greater visual...Read More impact- however, it is a tropical palm, and requires a great deal of warmth and humidity to look it's best. Raphia require near constant irrigation, or plant them close to a body of water. If you live in a dry climate, and water conservation is an issue, planting this palm will result in wasting a lot of precious water. I've seen them flourish when grown directly in a bog garden, or adjacent to a river or lake.

If you have a large yard and are in Southern California Southern Texas or Southern Florida where this palm thrives, you have to have this...Read More palm in your yard. I saw these growing in their habitat all the way down to secluded areas outside of Krugar National Park and they are amazing. They thrive in Cape Town South Africa, which is cooler than southern CA and TExas, so it is definatley hardy. They also have some of the largest leaves in teh world, and when the first explorers came through they brought back the leaves of this palm, and said they were feathers from the elephant bird, which is now extinct in Madagascar.

This is a massive palm having some of the longest leaves in the entire plant kingdom (up to 70 feet long!) and is an important palm from ...Read Morean economic standpoint being the source of 'raphia', or leaf fibre- for making baskets, roofing, building materials, etc. As a young palm, like the one I had in Thousand Oaks, it has very spiny leave edges that rake you every time you try to reach in towards the center of the plant. However, I understand that as the plant ages, the leaves become more user friendly. Being known as a very tropical palm (from Africa and Madagascar) it is surprising that it should do so well in my yard where temps dropped down into the low 20s (did get badly burned that winter). However, the bud or meristem of this palm takes some time to actually peer it's head above ground where it's more subjected to environmental temps and winds. It is likely my palm will succumb once this happens. However, other have had success with this palm in So Cal. It is a beautiful palm having deep orange petioles, bright green leaves and some yellow in the rachis.

One thing that must be clarified, though, is this palm is MARGINAL in southern California (even the very best areas) and could not ever be called a species that 'thrives' here. It does take a lot of water (less if you have clay soils like I did)... but so far no one has gotten one to any significant size yet, so ultimate water requirements in So Cal not known.