The Newport Beach coconut palm:
What is so special about this, you might ask? Well, aside from the fact that it is a coconut palm, which is amazing in and of itself, this one has a plaque. A plaque that tells you why it is so wonderful.
See? This sort of thing does not really happen in pretty much most of the United States. In fact, they are extremely picky about where they will choose to grow. They need the minimum soil temperature to be around 65 degrees, meaning they can't have more than a few nights anywhere below the fifties. They will outright die if they have more than two hours of exposure to less than 32 degrees in the air. They will yellow, sicken, and die over a week or so if they have sustained periods less than 60 degrees, and in order to grow at all they need at least a few months of summer heat higher than 85 with sun, sun, and more sun. They love moisture, but they do not like being wet. They have the biggest seeds in the world, and are contenders for being the most viable germinators; coconuts floating on the Gulf Stream have landed in Norway and sprouted on beaches (mind you they withered away as seedlings even during the summer). Apparently they evolved in Malaysia about 60 million years ago, but they have been found all over the globe in the limits of the tropics near shores, and have been planted extensively as well. Some doubt that they are naturally occurring in Florida, to whom I ask why De Soto and De Leon found them growing on the shores back then.
Just where do they grow on our continent anyway?
As you can see, not in very many places. They have been planted in this one spot, as well as on some of the Texas barrier islands. In southern Florida, they appear from Tampa and Fort Pierce southward as planted specimens, and most likely occur naturally on beaches from Sarasota and Vero Beach southwards. Like the mangroves and Royal palms, they might extend northwards in warmer decades and then die back as far down as Naples and West Palm Beach during colder times. In Mexico, they start growing around Tampico, and out west have handled the hottest parts of the Sonoran desert at Guaymas rather well. They grow wild on Bermuda, but do not produce seeds. Continental cold air masses blessing the United States and Mexico from gracious Canada just wipe them out unless they are close to a very powerful body of water or into the tropics.
So wow, how on earth does this thing grow here? Well, it has a good advantage of all that concrete radiating heat during the night, and coastal, meaning within 300 feet of the Pacific, southern California has a very amazing climate that sticks around 70 for daytime highs ALL YEAR.
Inside the yellow line is "wow, this feels amazing!". Inside the orange line is "man, this is warm, but hey, I expect it to be 83 in July right?" Inside the red line is "the man who invented air conditioning has a place in heaven for sure. I don't care if you say this is dry heat." Inside the black line is "forget the egg, my FEET are frying on the sidewalk!" Past the black line is "why... God... why?" The blue circles are the lovely exceptional spots that have snow in the winter and moderate heat in the summer, being mountains. The winters can occasionally bring fun things in the reverse order, with past the black turning into a rare but possible "How the hell does it snow here when the ground was 180 degrees a few months ago?!" and inside of the orange being "thankfully I live in Anaheim. I may have to break out a jacket (60 degrees, which, yes, makes these people total wimps), but at least I never see a freak snowstorm." Inside of yellow? "What is this... frost... you speak of?"
Yep. Riverside there might be baking away at 105, but the harbor front condos in San Diego will enjoy a nice 68 on the hottest morning. The difference is extremely pronounced west of Los Angeles in that spot where the yellow and orange lines are almost on top of each other. This area is known as the Santa Monica mountains, and is home to famous locales like Mulholland drive and Malibu. On a drive back in June, I was getting off of California highway 101 to get to the beach. The mercury there in Thousand Oaks was 95. Over the space of mere miles, in Long Grade canyon leading down to the Oxnard plain, I saw it drop a degree every ten seconds. By the time I was at the bottom of the canyon, things were a much more pleasant 71. Thousand Oaks is only 800 feet above sea level, by the way. The effective change was not like coming down a mountain so much as it was like stepping into a beer room at the grocery store... except outside. In Santa Monica (where that pier that Forrest Gump stopped at before turning around the run across the country again is), the difference is so pronounced that walking two blocks in from the beach gives you a reversal in cloud conditions and a five degree jump in the temperature. LA can be drenched in a winter rain, but the beach will be sunny and clear right above!
But 68-70 during the day and 55 at night is hardly tropical, just very ocean-moderated. Sure, they can do nice palms in Southern California, especially in that yellow and orange area.
But it is still more of a Naples, Italy than a Naples, Florida. The plus side to California? The extreme lows do not get dangerous for citrus crops like they can get in Florida during arctic outbreaks. The California farmers have mountains, deserts past the mountains, more mountains, and a cold-killing, yet frigid in itself Pacific ocean to protect the groves. That same protection is even good all the way up to Vancouver, where residents have started growing cold-hardy palms of their own. Palms in Canada!
Thank you, Brent, for this article. Belonging to the International Palm Society and living in the South Bay Area in Los Altos, your words were well written. That coconut in Newport is famous with palm lovers like me but also criticised by some as being ugly compared to the more robust ones in warmer southern sites. That one palm has inspired many newcomers to the hobby to discover the diverse world of nearly 3,000 species of palms and to grow many of them in their own gardens.
ReplyDeleteI suppose some people would say that a happy plant would be a thriving one. At the same time, this tree is not exactly on death's door and is very much alive, perhaps even the progenitor of a new hardier subspecies of itself. Plants seek out existence in the most extreme of places on their own; the micro-sized spruces of the edge of the tundra in Canada are beautiful evidence that plant life thrives under different definitions than what we would consider to be a lush existence. Such plants as these and the Newport palm do indeed encourage human gardeners to push the limits. In the end we gain a new appreciation of nature and the plants get a new edge.
DeleteIt seems this northernmost California coconut palm has died. Very unfortunate. But it also proves it can survive in San Diego. Even if at a smaller size. Still beautiful to behold
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