Trachycarpus
Trachycarpus fortunei
The palm that gets through cold gardens — provided its crown has shelter and the ground drains.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun to partial shade, in a position with shelter.
- Watering
- Water regularly for the first 2 years; established palms are fairly drought-tolerant.
- Feeding
- A palm-specific slow-release feed in spring and again at midsummer.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Take off fully dead brown fronds only; green and yellowing leaves stay where they are.
- Overwintering
- Wrap the crown in fleece through severe frost; established palms take -10°C.
- Apr–May Spring Growth
- May–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 8 ft 2 in
- In-row spacing
- 8 ft 2 in
- Between rows
- 10 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
- 8–16 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 Trachycarpus’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.
- Scale insects Scale insects on the leaf undersides
- Phytophthora root and foot rot Phytophthora (crown rot) in waterlogged conditions — drainage is the answer
- Cold wind damage to young leaves — put something between it and the north and east winds
- Yellowing lower fronds, which are natural — remove them once fully brown
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