Brisbane City council $14000 of palms drowned

Eric Frei

Recently the newspaper contacted me as to why large planted Cuban royal palms may have died.

I did a drive by of the site and spoke with the journalist over the phone. The palms were very yellow, leaves browning but not totally crisp as you'd expect from dry conditions.

I could not know if they were container grown palms or ground extracted, only would know that from buying them or pulling one out.

The paving around the trunks of the palms appeared to me the porous style paving.

I could only imagine that the surrounding soil in the hole would become a well in rain, and plenty of surface water would fill that well.



My gut feeling was the palms were drowned in the holes they were planted in, council appears to have confirmed that. Palms don't mind excess water but not many trees can live in water like say mangroves do. In addition the radiant heat from all the concrete, paving and buildings is pretty bad too, then shove in a stack of pollution.

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