Butterfly Palm in Winter

This is a Butterfly Palm or Areca Bambú Palm, or Golden Cane Palm, growing in our yard. Its botanical name is Dypsis lutescens and it originated in Madagascar

This is one of two lovely trees in our yard that have something extra to delight us besides their natural beauty at this time of year. I am including it here because we caught it just as it sprouted 4 seed stocks. These are photos of this Areca Bambú Palm in mid September in Águas da Prata.




It is a clustering palm, with up to about a dozen golden coloured trunks, but no main trunk. The trunks curve out from the base, while the feather leaves are quite recurved as well.

This is one of the most popular palms in the tropics and sub-tropics, due to its ease of growth, and attractiveness. Used for both landscaping duties, as well as an indoor plant. It is a very adaptable palm, but grows best in full sun, in a well drained, but moist spot. It is drought tolerant, but not very frost tolerant.

When the seed stock opens as it looks like this.

















Close up.




Very close up you can see the individual nuts. The birds love them. As soon as they mature we will have flocks of birds come to dine. They only take a day to eat all these nuts.




As you can see each little branch is loaded with nuts.




Here is a second stock not opened yet.





Here is the second stock from a different angle.




This is a third stock.




You can see a fourth stock just starting to grow.





This photo lets you see all four stocks.


Last year we only had one stock. So this year we expect to see a great parade of birds visiting us. It should be exciting to watch. However, we must keep the cats away while the birds feed. There are no stocks showing up in the other tree yet. The nuts are a favourite food for the Green Parrots.




This is another tree a few blocks awy from our house. It has very many seed stocks.




The tree has most of its stocks already open.




This will be a favourite spot for the parrots to visit soon.




References:

Palm & Cycad Societies of Australia
http://www.pacsoa.org.au/palms/Dypsis/lutescens.html

K-Palms Nursery and Seeds
http://www.kpalms.com/



Photos by Urso Branco