Ravenea Species, Sihara Palm

This is a very lovely little palm. It doesn't have a crown shaft, same as all Ravenea. However with its smooth thin leaning and wandering...Read More trunk and long upright petioles and a full head of long fine slightly arching leaves with horizontal leaflets neatly on one plane that droop at the tips its also extremely attractive. It has a unique almost Mesozoic look to it that is so alluringly different to most other palms even amongst Ravenea.

Like cycads you get strictly male and female palms so need to grow at least five if you want seed with any degree of certainty. It can be a somewhat variable palm depending on growing conditons and a few seem naturaly thick and coarse resembling a stunted Ravenea rivularis with shortened leaves, these oddities are less desirable so look for the finer seedlings rather than the overly robust ones with wide stiff leaflets. High humidity also affects how they look for the better.

There is a fair amount of misinformation regarding its growing preferences.

For one its not a particularly cold hardy palm and grows best with zero frost. In fact temps not going much bellow +-44%F for a short dry winter are ideal. It can however take these cooler temperate temperatures as well as warm subtropical to tropical ones.

Even though it comes from an area of reasonable altitude in Madagascar it grows in extremely deep steep permanently green moist humid ravines, amongst ferns and evergreens. These moist areas are substantially lower than the surrounding more arid high mountain ridges and peaks and plateaus, this also affords protection and an ideal growing environment. It's a humid micro climate where hot air descends during colder weather and streams all but vanish in the dry cool season or have gone deep beneath the rocks to just a trickle.

So technically not a high plateau palm.

The other thing is it's not particularly a xerophytic palm either. Rainfall is reliable but seasonal and heavy, its an alternatively inundated then dry habitat but never completely dry, water flows deeply beneath the rocks almost all year and forms permanent deep pools either open or filled with rock and boulder so it remains humid and as such. More a subtropical palm in that respect. They send long thick (for the diminutive size of the palm) roots down to secure themselves in the rocky thin soils and gain access to water in apparently seasonally dry river beds, or into seepage lines in moisture holding clefts in rock. Growing it as a xerophyte or as drought hardy like a cactus won't be as successful even when very well established as it prefers a stable warm humid micro climate. Even though it can take occational flooding this doesn't sit for long in these fast moving streams, that drain quickly even when flooded.

They need regular watering in cultivation and less in the cool dry season.

Seeds germinate and grow in or near sheltered moist warm shaded crevises, so seedlings prefer humidity the higher it is the more they prefer direct sun early on.

I planted a nice 15 gallon Ravenea glauca in the yard back in 1999 & it grew very well although slowly until the freeze of 2006 when we h...Read Moreit 19 degrees F. The palm is still alive today and finally seems to be coming out of "little leaf mode" that has lasted all this time. It is planted about 10 feet from our pool & I'm sure that played a part in it's ability to survive & make an eventual comeback. I have since planted three others and all are doing well so far.
A really great looking palm for 9a that stays small for a nice alternative to phoenix robellini.
Seems to like some shade and quite a bit of moisture. I would avoid dry heat locations if possible.

My ravenea glauca suffered some severe burn this year given the winter lows in Cupertino/Saratoga (25.3, as typical, reached right at day...Read Morebreak on a January morning). The palm is otherwise recovering with a new green spear, but this experience and prior success suggests the temperature limit for this palm would be right around 26 degrees, perhaps a touch warmer. Previous "typical" winter lows of 26.5-28 did not seem to phase the plant. My experience suggests that with even a slight amount of protection (e.g., near heat shadow of a strucutre), this palm would be fine for the colder parts of the SF Peninsula area.

This palm is proabably the BEST Ravenea for So Cal.. it doesn't yellow like the more common R rivularis (Majesty Palm), and it is more to...Read Morelerant of wind, drought and heat. It is a much slower grower, on the down side, and harder to find unless you know someone just selling specialty palms. I have had great luck with this species in So Cal, as has just about everyone else. It is fine leaflets, no crownshaft, and is a bit glaucous. The trunk is about 1/2 the thickness as a Majesty palm (maybe 6"). We still don't know the eventual size in So Cal since there are few specimens even with any trunk.

Sadly the cold snap we had in California Jan 07 showed how unhardy this palm actually is... my two fairly large seedlings, one with leaves extending above my head, completely killed by temps around 26F... though it interestingly took a couple weeks for the full extent of the damage to show (unlike most dead palms in the yard which were obviously dead in a few days)... sigh