PlantFiles: Dwarf Palmetto, Bluestem Palmetto, Blue Palm
Sabal minor

This palm is a very common understory plant in the wet coastal regions of South Carolina, where it receives very little sunlight. My husband found a small single fan in the back of our property years ago and moved it several times. It now resides near the base of an oak tree, where it quickly developed additional fans, then surprised us with a couple of seed stalks in late May 2009. We didn't know the name of this palm until today.

Near 0 deg. F. here in Roanke Va a couple of weeks ago, with no damage to the three of these I have, all unprotected and all in different areas on the property, with none near the house.

I have never lived anywhere warm enough that palms were a good idea. So for that exotic look I have always liked Palmettos. Slow growing but very tough plants, cold hardy, and the same look as Spanish Bayonet without the danger. I planted several in Houston, they loved the wet, heavy clay soil, and mockingbirds loved the seeds. They were also occasionally to be seen wild in East Texas dry woods. Now I see densely packed trunkless Palmettos growing wild in low wet woodlands in Augusta, GA, and five foot trunks along the Atlantic coast. Of course it is the state tree of SC and appears on their flag, figuring in the patriot victory at Ft Moultrie.

I have a volunteer in my dry shady clay back yard, it is growing slowly - after 2-3 years just beginning to think about throwing up a five inch hand. A neighbor has some volunteers as well which seem to be pretty tough, she parks her trash can on top of one of them.

Working in front of some bulldozers, I dug up half a dozen from the wild and planted them deep in another back yard for a mysterious exotic look. Even on the youngest specemins the corms were a foot down in the muck. They are now in shallow craters that hopefully will accumulate water - the reverse of what would be recommended for any other plant in this clay soil. So far half are doing well. I suspect it will be many years - decades? if ever before they get trunks. I would have liked them in the front yard as well, but need something that will grow quicker.

If you can pick and choose it may not be your first choice, but if palms are a stretch in your area, give the palmetto a look.

According to Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery, The Mc Curtain county, OK form of this palm seems to be hardier than the Needle Palm, and Logan Calhoun, whom he bought his first seeds from, reported that a number of seedlings planted in Wichita, KS survived winter temps of -24 deg F, and are producing seeds. Now if only these remarkable plants were more readily available (Plant Delights Nursery sells them as fast as they can grow them).

Update #1: I have managed to purchase two 1-gallon plants from Gerry's Jungle, and planted them in an area that is semi-shaded, near a natural seep that stays moist all year (even in our worst droughts). The palmettos are doing well thus far, but we'll see how they handle the winters around here. I'll be updating this comment next spring.

I did not like this palm at the begining. I went to the Nursery several times but I did not even look at it. The reason was, it forms no trunk forever! Until now, afterI got all the trunking Palms like Takils, Fortunei and Wagners all planted, I knew something was missing. I needed some bushy to be plant around the Trunked Palm. It could also use as a edge plant. It works perfect for the landscaping without spending a lot of time and money. A main theme of the tropical garden actually form like this.
It was very hard to make the decision to choose between Oklahoma Sabal Minor or T. Nannus (Yunnan Drawft Palm).
I finally got one T. Nannus for fun collection and majority of the bush, edges went by Oklahoma Sabal Minor. It's a native plant, unbelivable that you can find wild palm trees in such outbacked inland of America. There is only Mccurtain county has it, no where else. Many palm lovers try to go find it in that county but failed. The key is you need to go in either winter of fall when all the weeds are dead to make it uncovered to be seen.
I personally recommand not to get Sabal Louisiana, a variety of Sabal Minor which is much more easy to get than Oklahoma Sabal Minor. Sabal Louisiana grows tall, up to 10 feet. You will not able to see the trunk in 10 years. The trunk is ugly like an old spiky chimney.

The one that I like is Sabal Minor Mccurtain County Oklahoma form.

I can tell you that the Sabal minor is much hardier than one may think. The S. minor is cold hardy to temperatures as low as -5deg.F suffering from little if any damage. This palm can be grown in zones 6b - 10. I live in extreme southern Illinois(USDA zone 7a as indicated by the map on this webpage). In my yard on the south wall, I have two S. minors successfully growing. My Sabal minors were purchased from a palm nursery in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The seeds of the two specimens were collected from a native cold hardy population growing in northeastern Texas. As far as appearence, I enjoy the clumping form of the palm, it adds a "deep south" look to a northern garden. In places like Miami, the S. minor may not look very attractive growing next to a Cocos nucifera, but it looks great here!

Personally, from a palm collector point of view, this is my least favorite of all palms. It rarely, if ever forms any trunk and tends to looks scrubby/messy all the time. Whenever we go to the palm auctions here in So Cal, and someone has a Sabal sp., it invariably ends up being one of these.

I love Sabals, but this is not my favorite. Even S etonia, another native of this area, has more interesting leaves, being more costapalmate and generaly more green (though S minor is a variable species that can be green as green can be in some individuals... yellow-green is not all the uncommon, either). It must be said this is an incredibly easy palm to germinate, though, and a prolific seed producer. Plants just 5-6 years old in the ground in Southern California (U.S.) are already making viable seed, remarkable for a Sabal (usually takes 15+ years for the other species to do that).

Another way to tell it from S etonia, the other trunkless Sabal, is this one has inflorescences that extend far beyond the leaves, while those of S etonia do not. THese also tend to shoot straight up in the air, while S etonias are more arching and bend towards the earth.

This interesting, small native palm grows in large patches under old live oak trees on my six acre property in Northcentral Florida, zone 8b. It grows near the road and driveways, where it can get some sun during the day. It is "a very fine dwarf palm with glaucous, silvery-green, fan-shaped leaves, almost circular in outline, and deeply and geometrically cut into 20 or 30 segments," which is a quote from an English seed catalog. The Europeans seem to value our American native plants as landscape specimens much more than we do--the grass is always greener?

This plant is highly variable, due to genetics. Its native range is the coastal plain of the Atlantic states and the states along the Gulf of Mexico, and the varieties grow larger from East to West, with some specimens in Texas found growing as tall as 18 feet--of course, they are in Texas. My plants seem to top out at about six feet. Sabal minor is touted in the plant trade as being the hardiest palm, and often pictured under snowfall. Coldhardiness is also genetically determined, with plants from its northernmost range being the most hardy, and it is grown as a landscape plant as far north as Rhode Island.

In the trade it has various named varieties: 'Louisiana' is often named as the smallest dwarf palmetto, but there is a variety that grows to only two feet or so from Southeastern Oklahoma. The LSU agricultural center has done extensive genetic research and found that Dwarf Palmetto can live to be over 400 years old! The plant was first described by LeClercq in an account of LaSalle's explorations of the Mississippi River valley. There is another small form at about three feet square called 'Hill Country Form' that is from "remnant populations existing along and near water growing in and out of limestone rock in the baking Texas sun."

In Florida the Dwarf Palmetto grows naturally in about half of the counties, mainly in the northern parts of the state, in the understory of deciduous woodland. In the trade it is often confused with Sabal etonia, the Scrub Palmetto, which is another dwarf fan palm that perfers the dry pineland and sand pine scrubs of Central Florida. You can easily tell the difference because Sabal minor does not have the stringlike filaments that develop along the edges of the leaves of Sabal etonia.

The native people found many uses for this plant, from roofing material to cooking to medicine. It has an interesting underground trunk, so appears trunkless until it reaches a certain size, genetically determined of course, and the white flower inflorescence is sweetly fragrant and bears small, shiny deep blue fruit after flowering.

It is readily propagated from seed, but seed should be sown as soon as possible, as dried seed is much more difficult to propagate. Seedlings should be grown out in a pot for a year or two as young plants have not developed their legendary coldhardiness. Siting can be problematic, as it likes it's head in the sun and it's feet near the water, or at least a wet site. It can be grown as an inpenetrable border, or as a tall ground cover under oaks. It is not known to be invasive and has no known serious pests.