
Mediterranean fan palm is a shrubby palm, with a few small trunks. Atlas Mountain palm, Chamaerops humilis var. argentea, is an even shrubbier variety. Mediterranean fan palm can grow slowly to about twenty feet tall. Atlas Mountain palm grows even slower to only about eight feet tall. Its several trunks become strikingly sculptural only after many years.
The primary allure of Atlas Mountain palm, though, is its distinctly silvery gray foliar color. Individual fan shaped leaves may be nearly two feet broad, with deep and narrow clefts. Petioles are so nastily thorny that grooming and pruning can be painfully difficult. Mature trunks can be six inches wide with dense coats of petiole bases. Bloom is not prominent.
Atlas Mountain palm is notably undemanding. Once established, it does not crave much water or fertilizer. Nor is it finicky in regard to soil quality. It is resilient to both extremes of heat and cold. After several years, it might benefit from thinning of superfluous trunks and pups. Like many palms, Atlas Mountain palm should perform well within big pots or tubs.
So what’s its minimum temperature then, since you say it’s resilient? For you, it might not be too much of a problem, but it could be in Northern Europe. It’s a beauty, though! Potted here it would be perfect.
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It can tolerate 10 degrees, which is colder than it gets here. However, although it can tolerate cold weather for a while, it dislikes the sort of climates where such cold weather is possible. For example, it can tolerate the cold weather of the Pacific Northwest, but does not like the prolonged winters or the cool summers.
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