19871

Principes. 3l(2), 1987, pp. 55-63

This discussion on chamaedoreas willconcern those that I have grown over theyears in Miami, San Francisco, and Wal-nut Creek. Also I will touch on those I'mfamiliar with in southern California. Itseems that in each of these climate zonessome grow better than others' while otherspecies excel in all zones. This will be thefirst of a series of articles about the variousaspects of Chamaedoreo culture'

I will refer to "Palms in Australia" byDavid Jones because it has nice colonpho-tographs and for the most part gives ade-quate descriptions.

Jones states there are 133 species ofCharnaedorea. Dr. Hal Moore thoughtabout 100, but there may be more' I haveseen photographs taken by Dr. Bob Readand others of plants from South and Cen-tral America that look ltke Charnaedorea,but the palms had never been seen before,and are still not collected or identified.These unidentified exotics are mostly cloudforest palms that require exacting tem-peratures, humidity, and soil pH, and arenot well suited for home or garden culturein the U.S.A. The cloud forest chamae-doreas seem to tolerate only a narrow tem-perature range somewhere in the 60's and7O's, with constant humidity, and just theright amount of subdued light. They don'tlike chemical fertilizers and are fussy abouttheir growing medium-not ideal plantsfor the home environment. I have givenup trying to grow the cloud forest cha-maedoreas. They are often small and quitebeautiful, but are so difficult to grow, theymay bring disappointment.

DOUGLAS: CHAMAEDOREA CULTURE

Growing Chamaedoreas:Six Simple Leaved Ones

RrcHenn Doucles35 Amberwood Lane, Walnut Creek, CA 94598

There are some chamaedoreas that comefrom higher elevations that do wel incoastal California, primarily in southernCalifornia. The temperatures in northernCalifornia are a little extreme for thesepalms to look their best, although they dogrow here. Many of these are large clus-tering plants, and some are hybrids. Sev-eral years ago, a grower in southern Cal-ifornia let me test some of his hybrids inWalnut Creek, where the climate is moreextreme than in other areas of the SanFrancisco Bay area. These plants are toobig for the house and must be protectedin the winter. As an experiment, I left oneout last winter under the protection of anoak and it was defoliated. I moved it backin the greenhouse before the winter wasover, and it has recovered nicely. I willdiscuss the large species and hybrids in aIater article.

Now for the ones that have survivedmy care! If you think the automobile com-panies put their wares to the test, think ofwhat my chamaedoreas have gonethrough-drought, heat, dust, neglect, andsometimes too much attention.

If one had the room, the time, and theclimate, just chamaedoreas alone couldoccupy all of a palm enthusiast's time.They did mine for many years, until I gotstung by the Rhapis bug. Unfortunately'Rhapis don't lend themselves to fastgrowth, or hybridizing. The chamaedoreasare relatively fast growing, inexpensive,and \4rith a little persistence, easy to acquire.

Rather than put them together botani-cally, which I am not qualified to do, I am

going to put them first in order of appear-ance, and discuss some later that seem tobe closely related.

The Simple Leaved Ones

The simple or entire fronded ones: C.rnetallica, C. ernesti-augusti, C. geonomi-formis, C. fragrans, C. stolonifera and, C.brachypod,a are six, easy-to-grow palms.They all require shade, and are frost ten-der. They will take temperatures right downto freezing, and maybe a little below, iffrost is not allowed to form on the foliage,but they are all essentially tropical palrns,so anything below freezing could be theend. Chamaedorea fragrans seems to bethe most tropical of the group; it doesn'tlike cool nights. C. m.etallica and C.geonomiforntis are the next in tenderness.Three of the six, C. fragrans, C. stolon-ifera and C. brachypoda, are clusteringand are usually propagated by .division.Their opposite sex often isnot around, andexcept for C. fragrans, they are easy topropagate vegetatively.

I'll start with C. fragrans (Fig. l), arare species, difficult to divide, and foundonly in botanical and a few private collec-tions. Most of the original plants in thiscountry came from David Barry. It wasonce considered endangered, but I thinkthere are both sexes in south Florida now.C. fragrans is from Peru, where AllenFernandez from Miami visited its habitatseveral years ago. He could find no seeds,but he has several plants which he broughtback, presumably including both sexes. Hesaid the C. fragrans were growing in asandy, rather poor soil with about 2" ofmulch over it. Growing on the trees abovethem were Plntycerium andinium,the onlystaghorn fern native to the Ameri"ur. i.fragrans is slow to grow from seed, andis probably best propagated by division.The base of each stem has a bulb-likeswelling which will put out several pups ifgiven time. This species won't toleratemuch light and does better in my housethan in the greenhouse, where it seems lo

[ V o r . 3 l

tolerate low humidity. It thrives on neglect,and doesn't mind getting quite dry.

Secondly, Chamaedorea stolonifera isin my opinion, the best of all; this is aclustering palm with small stems less thanV*" in diameter and was another DayidBarry introduction which, he told me, hefound in France. It was lost to cultivationin thelU.S.A. for many years until Barryfound it. Hal Moore told me that it wasprobably extinct in the wild. It comes fromthat area in Mexico in Chiapas where thevolcano blew up a few years ago. Therecouldn't have been much left after that,but from what I know, that is the area thatC. stolonifera came from.

C. stolonifera is easy to grow and prop-agate. It throws out rather weird stolonsabove the soil surface, and after they areseveral inches or up to a few feet long,they anchor themselves on the soil andbegin to grow a new plant. After the stolongrows to a certain length, it makes a swol-len area along its stem. This can be easily"mossed," and within lwo or three monthsafter roots have formed can be cut off tomake a new plant. It is best to let threefronds form above the mossed area beforeit is severed from the mother plant. Fromthat, you have a mature plant in two orthree years.

Teddie Buhler has a clone o{ C. stolon-ifera that seems different from mine. Ibelieve hers came from a botanical eardenin Germany, but it has a slightly di-fferentappearance. She gave some to FairchildTropical Garden several years ago, andthey have a large clump growing in theground near the sink hole. Both clones arefemale.

Chamaed.orea stolonifera and C.brachypoda are often co;fused, but C.brachypoda has been in cultivation forsome time and is not so rare. It probablyhas the smallesl trunk diamet"r of uI thlpalms. C. brachypoda does not like strongchemical fertiiizers, as they make the frondsdevelop brown tips. Fish emulsion seemsto be the best substitute. C. brachypodaproduces rhizomes below ground, while C.

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19871

stolonifera oostolonates" above ground. Thedescription of C. brachypod;

'n "Palms

in Australia'o is accurate; it should be notedthat C. brachypoda has a thin paperytexture and a lighter color than C. stolon-ifera. Of the six palms, C. brachypodaisthe most difficult to grow to perfection asit often seems to become chlorotic and itis sensitive to low humiditv. but it is well

DOUGLAS: CHAMAEDOREA CULTURE

worth the effort. It should be in everyenthusiast's collection.

C. stolonifera has a heavy textured,shiny frond and produces about five frondsa year per stem. It is somewhat resistantto red spider, but may get it sometimes,as the others do. An occasional spray underthe foliage seems to keep the spider incheck. C. stolonifera and C. brachypod,a

l. Chamaedorea fragrans, photograph of a drawing by Phil Elia.

58

can be bonsaied, but after about three orfour years must be moved into a regularcontainer.

The three remaining single trunkedspecies must be grown from seeds. C.geonomifortnis takes only about threeyears to start flowering after germination,C. metallica about three to four vears.and C. ernesti-augu.sli about five io sixyears. To confuse the issue, I should men-tion that C. rnetallica, C. ernesti-augusti,C. stolonifera, arrd C. sartori (to beincluded later) are in the Eleutheropetalumgroup and were once classified in a differ-ent genus. I won't dwell on pollination orwhat will cross with what, since that willbe in another article and will be lengthyand complicated.

I don't know why C. ernesti-augustiand C. geonomiforftLis are confused witheach other. C. ernesti-augustiis about tentimes as large, has entirely different flow-ers, and a lighter green foliage. €. ernesti-augusti has been in the trade for years,while C. geonomiformis has only beenaround for about the last fifteen, and I wasthe one who originally got C. geonomifor-rnis out of the closetl

For many years, the onJy plants of C.geonomiformls known in cultivation weregrowing inthe Chomaedorea collection atFairchild Gardens and Paul Drummond hada few plants growing in his garden in Miami.When Paul's plants started producingseeds, he let me have all of them for thefirst few years. I grew them up and dis-tributed the plants to palm society mem-bers in California and took plants back toFlorida to members there. I gave Fairchildsome young plants as their plants weregetting old and leggy. Soon seeds werebeing produced from the plants that I dis-tributed.

Finally, the Seed Bank received a lot ofseeds and they were distributed far andwide. After propagating the plant for aboutten years, I sort of lost interest in it andallowed my seeding plants to dwindle. Justlast year, Jim Mintken gave me some seedsfrom plants that I had given him several

[Vor. 3l

years ago. How about that for a full circle?We plant collectors are fickle people.

Besides being a neat little plant and easyto grow in a home, I discovered somethingabout C. geonomiformis that even HalMoore didn't know.

Most of the chamaedoreas flower in thespring, grow their fruit in the summer, andmatute in fall or the winter months. Everytime I visited Paul Drummond, it seemedhis female C. geonornifurmis had a fewripe and green fruit on them. This puzzledme.

It was only after I observed my newlyseeding plants that it occurred to me whatwas happening. I had hand pollinated myfemales the year before and had plenty offresh pollen, so I was sure that every singleflower had been pollinated. Only about lzof the female flowers were producing seedthe first year, but the flowers on the femalespike that didn't seem to be pollinated didn'tfall off, but remained firmly embedded onthe inflorescence. (All the other Chamae-dorea species abort their female flowerswithin two days to several weeks afteranthesis if they aren't pollinated, the"eleutheropetalum" species usually withintwo days.)

One spring when both.sexes of C. geono-miformis were blooming, something verystrange was happening. I was pollinatingthe flowers on the newly emerged inflo-rescence, but I noticed that those old flow-ers on the year-old inflorescence werebeginning Lo grow seed.

I thought to myself, "I've never heardof this before." After careful observation,I realized that this process had been goingon for some time, but I hadn't been cleverenough to realize it.

In addition to the ripe fruit, about rZ

spaced at random along the inflorescence,and the young green fruit, there were afew others in varying stages of develop-ment. This was a great discovery for me,and I couldn't believe it. Sometime thatsame year or the next, Dr. Moore visitedme, and I showed it to him. At first hecouldn't believe it either. but as I related

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19871 DOUGLAS: CHAMAEDOREA CULTURE 59

my observations, and showed him theplants, he scratched his chin, shook hishead, and said, " Amazi:ng, this isn'trecorded anywhere.o' Then he flew into meand "growers" in general for not recordingthese things. "You people," just don't knowhow important these things are, etc., etc.I'm sure I was always a "grower" to Hal,but it gave me a great deal of satisfactionto point out something that he didn't know.

I talked to Hal about how this phenom-enon should be described, but he didn'thave a ready answer. FortunatelY,"National Geographic" had an article aboutkangaroos the same year, and they dis-cussed 'oembryonic diapause," a situationwhere if the primary "jo.y" gets killed,there is another little thing there waitingto take its place. Embryonic diapausemeans arrested growth of the embryo.What happens in C. geononiforrnis is asort of parallel.

By producing seed over an exteiirdedperiod, C. geonomiftrmis has ripe seedsthroughout the year, and when climaticconditions are right, they germinate to formnew plants. When the female plants bloomin the spring, apparently hormones orenzymes are produced in the plants whichstimulate the dormant, but pollinatedembryos into producing fruit. As I said,approximately r/t of the dormant flowersproduced fruit, and then the remailringflowers would produce sporadic fruit forthe following year or two.

The peduncle of C. geonomiformis isquite small in diameter and grows to abouteight inches long. At first they are vertical,but finally the weight of the fruit bendsthe peduncle down. The peduncle is cov-ered with bracts which become papery intexture when they dry. After the bractsdry, I peel them away to expose the wirypeduncle which turns bright orange whenexposed to light for a few weeks, as doesthe spike bearing the fruit at its tip.

C. geonomiformis gers very pale if giventoo much light. Grown in a subdued cornerof the greenhouse or a home situation, itseems to be quite huppy. It is a small palm

aboti Va the size of C. metallica and willgrow to maturity in a I gal. pot. Givensubdued light and ample fertfizer, the shinyfoliage turns dark green. The female plantsare quite attractive when holding theirgreen unripe fruit and ripe black fruit onthe orange flower spikes. With its irregularmaturation, there is always some fruit onthe female, if they have been pollinated.

(I'm going to interrupt my dissertationon C. geonorniformis for a moment,because writing about it brings somethingvery important to mind if one grows seedsof these plants.) What I am about to tellyou is true, not only on the six simplefronded chamaedoreas, but on the othersthat I will discuss later on-in anotherarticle!'When

chamaedoreas bloom, the inflo-rescence pushes out from the base of theleaf. This is that portion that surroundsthe trunk of the plant. It could almost becalled the crownshaft, such as is found onthe royal palm. Because chamaedoreasare so small, this tubular leaf-base doesn'tquite qualify as a crownshaft, but it is thesame thing.

I like my palrns to be tidy, so as thelower fronds fall away or are cut off, theold leaf-base will remain and turn brownor tan. I carefully remove these to exposethe pretty green trunks. Nature put thesethings there for several reasons, and oneis to give support to the peduncle and theweight of the fruit. When we hand polli-nate, sometimes every single flower will seta seed. This seems more than natureplanned and the structure of the plant maynot support the weight of the fruit.

lf the supporting leaf-base has beenremoved and the peduncle is growing fromthe exposed trunk, I tie green stretch tapearound the trunk and the base of thepeduncle. Ifthe fruit is particularly heavy,I support the peduncle at about the middleof its length with more tape to the trunk.

This may sound a little extreme, but Ican tell you there is nothing more heart-breaking than to have gone to the troubleof hand pollinating a Chamaedorea, arnd

60

watched the fruit grow for months, or withsome of the hybrids two or three years,and then suddenly one day have the wholething break away when you brush againstit or because of the added weight of waterwhen it is sprinkled.

I once had a C. ernesti-augusti femalethat I had crossed with C. sartori. lt had,two inflorescences loaded with almostmature fruit. They were still green; theseed aren't ripe until the fruit turns black.Paul Drummond came out to visit andblasted my greenhouse with the water hose.The added weight of the water on the seedscaused both peduncles to break away fromthe trunk. I could have killed him, butanyway I learned an important lesson.

What brought all this to mind is the factthat C. geonom,iformis holds seeds for sev-eral years, and often the peduncles will bebelow the foliage on a bare trunk. C.geonom.iforrnis, in particular, needs a littlehelp if the fruit is to remain intact.

Does all the above make sense? Theprocess wouldn't be necessary if one weren'tso impatient to remove the old leaf-bases,or if there was not so much weight fromthe additional fruit caused by hand polli-nation.

Before I leave C. geonomifortnis behind,it is worth referring to the pictures of itand C. rnetallica in Principes, Vol. 10,No. 2 with descriptions. Also, C. metallicaused to beo and sometimes still is, mistak-enly called C. tenella. C. tenella somewhatresembles C. geonomiformis btli" is morediminutive. Hal Moore told me that C.tenella might just be another form of C.geonontifornris. I didn't mention C. tenellain the easy to grow ones, because it is quiterare, and not very pretty. It is quite smalland gets leggy later on.

Chamaedorea ernes ti- augusti (Fig. 2)is quite an attractive plant, probably themost spectacular of the group, but I havestopped growing it because it takes up somuch room. A mature plant is three tothree and one half feet across. It is easyto grow and produces about five fronds a

[Vol. 3l

year. A healthy plant will hold about 10fronds. Unless one lives in an area withoutfrost, this plant just requires too muchspace and attention. I once had several ofthese, and they did well outside in the warmmonths. When I had to move them in,they took up half of my greenhouse, andthe others in the house were always gettingin my way. C. ernesti-augusfi is somewhatsusceptible to red spider, and unless it isperfectly grown can look untidy. If one ofthose big entire fronds get damaged, itdetracts from the whole plant. I had per-fect plants for many years, but with theaddition of Rhapis and the attention ofother things, I just had to let them go. Ihave finally and sadly replaced C. ernesti-augusti with C. metallica.

C. metallica (Fig. 3) is my currentfavorite. It doesn't take much room; it'saboutVs the size of C. ernesti-augusti, andit is easy to grow. C. metallica has somany good things going for it that I'msurprised it's not more common. I don'tknow of any other palm that has such aheavy texture to the foliage and such adeep green color. It's tough too. The plantscan be dropped, knocked over, walked into,and they just don't get damaged. (I've doneall of the above!)

C. metallica tolerates the home envi-ronment better than any other palm I knowof, even Rhapist When a Rhapis driesout totally, it is usually dead. C. rnetallicastarts to drop the lower fronds which is aclear warning, but recovers rapidly with alittle water and tender loving care. C.metallica looks good grown as a single orseveral together in a larger pot. Becauseof the imposing foliage of C. ernesti-augusti, it should always be grown as asinele.

e . metallica comes in several forms,the one most common is entirely fronded.I have developed the split-leaved one, andlike it even better, because it has easygrowth requirements, and i{ one of theleaflets gets damaged, it can be cut off andnot detract from the entire plant.

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r9871 DOUGLAS: CHAMAEDOREA CULTURE

ernesti-augusti, photograph of a drawing by Phil Elia.2. Chamaedorea

62 P R I N C I P E S [Vor. 3l

3. Chamaedorea metallica, photograph of a drawing by Phil Elia

r9871 DOUGLAS: CHAMAEDOREA CULTURE 63

Every year when the first "warm rains"come I take the plants outside to be washedoff. There is something about rain that isvery beneficial. It dissolves all the dust andsalts on the foliage and helps to dissolvethe mineral deposits from the soil. I userain water all winter, but bring it inside inbuckets to warm to room temperaturebefore watering. Perhaps it's the pH. butplants sure respond lo rain waler.

The entire fronds are easv to clean. andto groom the plants for shows" I wash themoff with a fine spray from a garden hoseand then let them dry in the shade. I thenmake a mixture of 2 qts. warm water, Icup white vinegar, and 2 tbl. spoons ofHalf & Half or whole milk. I wipe thefoliage with a soft sponge using the abovemixture. The vinegar dissolves water spots,and the oil from the milk leaves a softnatural-looking gloss.

Almost any kind of well draining pottingsoil seems to suit the chamaedoreas,although to the prepared soils that I use,I add Perlite for drainage and oxygen cir-culation to the roots and some coarse build-ers sand to add weight and substance.

I use Peters 20-20-20 for fertilizer. and

always make sure that the plants have beenwatered the day before so there is no dan-ger of burning the roots. Occasionally Ialternate with fish emulsion which seemsto supply the necessary micronutrients tothe plants and also seems to condition thepotting soil and make it more water reten-tive.

As a fi4al note, and perhaps the mostimportant bf all, as the seasons change, Iam careful to observe the amount of sun-light that falls on the plants. In the summerwhen the sun is most intense, the plantsare moved to the most protected, shadylocations. One should be particularly care-ful during the winter and spring when thesun angle is low on the horizon. The warmspring sun, at its lower angle, can burnplants sitting too close to a window or underan overhang. Scorched fronds are unsightlyand it will take a year or more to replacethe damaged fronds with new healthyfoliage. A little precaution will prevent thismost unfortunate occurrence, and then youwill have some of the most beautiful smallpalms in the plant kingdom to admire andenioy!

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