Sabal minor, (Arecaceae)
Origin: Southeast United States, Texas to North Carolina
Sarasota tends to be a pretty tropical place, but we can have relatively bad winters, and freezes are not unheard of, even along the coast. One of the groups of plants hardest hit by cold winters are palms; they tend not to show the damage for many weeks to months after the freeze, and they are slow to recover—a result of growing just one leaf at a time. As areas of the county experience regular frosts during winter again, more and more people are turning to cold tolerant palms. One of my favorites is Sabal minor, the dwarf palmetto. They don’t really form a stem like most palms do, rather, they continue to grow leaves from ground level for many years, swelling in girth and looking exactly like baby cabbage palms, Sabal palmetto. What is a surefire way to tell a Sabal minor from a Sabal palmetto? Well palms, like all flowering plants, only bloom when they are mature. Stem-forming palms, such as the cabbage palm, do not mature until they have started forming a small amount of woody stem at their base. Sabal minor, however, does not form stems, and therefor bloom while still in their “ground stage.” So if you see a “baby cabbage palm” with bloom spikes on it, you can be sure that you’re actually looking at a dwarf palmetto.
These plants are native to Florida, but to see them you’re better off going north a little ways. They start becoming more common in Central and Northern Florida, and by the time you reach Georgia they’re the dominant understory palm. Most gulf coast states have cultivars of this palm which are grown as ornamentals, many of them hybrids with other cold-hardy sabals. They can grow very large, but never very tall, instead forming a large globe of fronds which add a tropical texture to any garden.
Sabal minor tends to grow as an understory plant in habitat, favoring moist and shaded areas, but can be cultivated in a surprising variety of conditions including full sun. It is one of the most cold-hardy palms there is, tolerating temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit. It has large, palmate fronds with a lateral “slit” and a chalky-blue color to the petiole, two characteristics which also help to identify this species compared to the cabbage palm. Selby Gardens has a small collection of dwarf palmettos in the Florida native area just west of the Mansion. This is the “Year of Florida,” and we are making improvements to some of our Florida Native gardens, including that hammock garden. See if you can tell the difference between the Sabal minor and the taller species of Sabal throughout the Gardens.
Text by David Troxell