Esperanza and poinciana (pride of Barbados) from Crazy Green Thumbs will be delayed again. I still have not sown the seed, and when I do, I will likely delay posting pictures of them until I have exhausted all of these pointless pictures that Brent sends to me. There may be six more for next week after these six. Fortunately, the few that arrived since this purging began are not very interesting, so need not be shared. These six pictures arrived at various times through the past few months; and I did not document dates for them. It would be difficult to identify their chronology without inquiring with Brent, and without familiarity with potentially observable seasonal indicators of the particular climate. I am less than three hundred fifty miles away, but in an entirely different climate and region.
1. Baby queen palm, Chamaedorea plumosa, which is not princess palm, Dictyosperma album, is related to popular bamboo palm, Chamaedorea seifrizii. Brent got this for me.
2. Of all of Brent’s landscapes, this might be my favorite. The formality is rad. However, these illuminated Canary Island date palms, Phoenix canariensis, must be embarrassed.
3. Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta, is a most common palm of the Los Angeles region. Although palms are popularly informal, some might be formal and symmetrical.
4. Mexican fan palm dominate the view. Kentia palm, Howea forsteriana, California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, and queen palm, Arecastrum romanzoffianum, got in too.
5. Brent likes to show off his palms. They are more visible from next door than from the garden they inhabit. The Mexican fan palm is a Memorial Tree for Brent’s brother Brian.
6. Coons! The arborist who pruned this Mexican fan palm returned to finish shaving the trunk, but found that a pair of coons who inhabited the beard were not ready to relocate.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Tony Tomeo 
That’s nice
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Thank you
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Great palms, no wonder Brent is proud of them. I am worried about the racoons though!
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Brent is an idiot.
The coons relocated. They are remarkably resilient and will be fine.
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Phew! (about the coons not Brent)
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Well, the coons are none too bright either; but they figured something out.
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The racoons are fun.
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They were not so amused. The unfortunate arborist who came back to finish his job needed to return the following day, after the coons had resigned to relocation.
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Those poor raccoons!! Did they get down?
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Yes, when the tree was cut down.
Actually, they reluctantly relocated, and the arborist returned the next day to shave the trunk of the palm.
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There was a black racer living in my palm trunks…I havent seen baby queen palms though there are a lot of queen palms here. They are considered less desirable palms.
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It is not really a queen palm. It just looks like a baby queen palm. It is more closely related to bamboo palm. They typically develop only one, two or three trunks. I suspect that as the tallest trunk gets too tall, it develops a pup to replace it, but should get no more than a few trunks at a time. Since I never met the species before, I do not know what to expect.
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Are palm trees shaved solely for aesthetic reasons? (And I’m assuming by shaved you mean that branch/frond stumps are cut off?)
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Yes, and various palms are conducive to various techniques. Queen palms shed their leaves and petioles, . . . although they sometimes need a bit of help. Leaving the petioles or ‘husks’ is not an option with them, and they do not develop beards. If abandoned, the old fronds hang limply for a while, but then eventually fall away to leave an exposed trunk. Mexican fan palms are completely different. They can retain long beards of old fronds, or get the beards pruned off to expose the pruned petiole bases or ‘husks’ within, or shaven to the bare trunks. They are not really shaven, but the old husks get removed to expose the bare trunk. Beards can get infested with vermin, and are very combustible. I dislike full bearded palms in urban situations because of their combustibility. Sometimes, they get pruned up to a particular height, and then left to collect beards higher up. Sometimes, old trees drop their beards! That can be very dangerous, and has squashed several parked cars in the Los Angeles region. Sadly, it has also killed a few arborists. The tree in the video had a full beard that the coon inhabited. The neighbor up above (who is Brent’s client) wanted the tree pruned and shaven because it is within her view more than it is withing the view of the neighbor who lives with it. The neighbor who lives with the tree was pleased to get the procedure done. Only the coons were displeased. The arborist pruned the beard away first, and then started to shave the husks, but needed to return to shave the remainder of the husks.
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