Majesty palm
Ravenea rivularis
also called ravenea
The big feathery palm stacked by the door of every home-improvement store each spring: graceful arching fronds, a fast landscape-palm metabolism, and a houseplant career it never actually applied for.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Bright indirect light indoors; a shaded patio for the summer
- Watering
- High; a river-bank palm that wants evenly moist soil and real humidity
- Soil
- Rich, moist potting mix that never fully dries
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 10a–11b
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 6 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 3 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 Majesty 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
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
- When
- Not harvested. Groom off wholly brown fronds; trim brown tips for looks whenever they bother you.
- What to look for
- A frond fully brown and papery to its base, usually the lowest one; brown leaflet tips on an otherwise green frond mean dry air or salty water, not death.
- How to harvest
- Cut spent fronds at the base with clean pruners. Trim brown tips to a point, staying inside the dead tissue. Flush the pot through with rain or filtered water every month or two to rinse fertilizer salts, and shower the fronds to knock back mites.
- How often
- Grooming monthly; the salt flush seasonally; a summer outdoors in bright shade is the best tonic it knows.
- Storing the crop
- Nothing to store. A palm cannot be cut back and regrown: everything comes from the single growing point in the crown, so protect that and only that.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & Amblyseius
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle Staphylinidae
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Fungus gnats
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Centipedes ChilopodaHunts Fungus gnats
Flat, fast, one pair of legs to a segment — and a predator, unlike the slow round millipede it is constantly confused with. It hunts slugs, cutworms, springtails and woodlice by night under mulch and stones. Learn the difference and leave this one alone.
- Dragonflies & damselflies OdonataHunts Fungus gnats
Aerial hunters that take mosquitoes, midges and small flies on the wing all day, and whose larvae spend a year or more clearing the same insects from the water. A pond with planted margins and no fish is the way to have them.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Spider mites
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Spider mites
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.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
It comes from riverbanks in Madagascar, which explains the thirst and the sulking in dry winter rooms. Treated as a two-season patio plant it is cheap magnificence; asked to be a permanent houseplant it needs the brightest window, steady water and a pebble tray, and even then the ficus was the easier tenant.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com