Cabbage Palm
Cordyline australis
Wet cold is what kills it, not cold alone — the crown rots long before the frost bites.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Full sun, or light shade at a pinch.
- Watering
- Very little once established — it takes drought in stride.
- Feeding
- A balanced slow-release fertilizer in spring.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Strip the dead lower leaves off once a year, in spring.
- Overwintering
- Once established, it holds to about -5°C.
- Apr–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Aug Flowering
- Aug–Dec Growing
- Jan–Apr Growing
- Plant spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 6 ft 2 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fibrous and non-woody, all from the base of the trunk
- Working depth
- 12 in–3 ft
- Can reach
- 5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 5–10 ft across, about 1–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 14 in of soil
A palm’s roots are issued from the trunk base and stay the same pencil thickness for life, so they lift paving far less than a broadleaf tree of the same height. The trade is that a root cut off is not replaced; it is simply gone.
The habit is Cabbage Palm’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
- Scale insects Immobile brown or white bumps fixed to stems and leaf undersides, sucking sap and weakening growth. Wipe off with a damp cloth or dab with horticultural soap; watch for the sooty mold that follows.
- Root & crown rot Crown rot through a wet winter
- Slime flux Cordyline slime flux, a bacterial infection
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Green-leaved trees, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com