Palm Trees

Apocalypsse

Remembering what we were told by a large established tree growing/transplanting company @ TAFE last year, 'There isn't a demand for mature palms'. Just out of boredom I've gone onto eBay and searched for 'palm'. Palms of all different sizes and species, ranging from $1k to $10k+, not for sale by professional growers but by home owners who think their tree is worth money.

What I'm trying to get at is where on earth did people come to think that their palm tree is worth thousands of dollars and that someone would transplant it at their own cost, especially when professional growers have palms just sitting there taking up resources. Is it from tree crews telling people their palm is worth money or people seeing how much big new developments are paying to have palms transplanted onto their flash new sites?

Drouin Tree Service

They are worth $$$ to some people...its like selling a used car just need the right buyer.The crane and transport costs usually make the $10k turn into $3-4k or a remove it for free situation.

I know a developer who did a estate called palm square but never installed the palms

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

Eric Frei

I get called about it all the time, often it turns out that the palms are cocos (weeds), run of the mill alex's or worse washy's and have really bad access anyway.

There's sufficient stock to buy ready to go in the hole cheap enough let alone the exuberant cost of transplanting and the risks associated with it. You can go to a wholesaler and buy a 75L alex palm (about 2m trunk) for $150, can grow 1m a year easy with little care.

Readers, stop and think about transplanting, it has to be dug out, lifted, transported, go in a pre-dug hole, staked, cared for. Not always is big good, the logistics in transporting a 15m tall palm is bad, expensive.

Some species do fetch a decent dollar and that would be the canary island date palm but I do see a few die after transplant.

Palms are a little out of vogue, they offer less than trees/shrubs in benefits, the mess can drive you nuts and people who live with them over time get really peeved off with them just as this young lady did. Yoiu often have to clean them and contractors even get killed and injured doing that.

Many palms grow tall (15m to 20m) or stay under 5m, hard to get one that's between.

All in all, there's not much of a market for palms anymore like there was 20 years ago.

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Drouin Tree Service

And the canary island date palm is a magnet for nesting birds,Noisey and messy.

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

Joshua Rugg

here in hawaii there are alot of people who thing that their coco palm is worth a lot of money because it has not been climbed with spikes. i saw on craigs list once a coco palm selling for $5,000. it was pristine, has not been spiked and has been pruned with care. turns out that person was a friend of one of my tree accounts. i contacted the seller and she said a local tree crew told her it was a $5,000 transplant. she took it as my tree is worth $5,000. i told her no one is gonna buy it because, 1. it's gonna cost way more then the palm is actually worth to transplant it, 2. coco palms are a common palm (weed as eric says) everyone has em, 3. coco palms need constant trimming in tropical places like here in hawaii. (they get trimmed about every 4- 6 months. after telling her all this she took the add off craigs list and decided to keep the palm.

KevinE

It depends on geographical location, species of palm & the requirements of current building developments. There is a business here that specialises in transplanting date palms: http://bit.ly/hd9xAC . They have a very good reputation. I do agree that the days of big $$$ for palms are over for now though.

It's quite rare for the big ones to die after being transplanted, but the dwarf ones planted all along Salisbury Hwy at Mawson Lakes all died. I don't think the council irrigated them!

dingo

I laughed when I read this advert in gumtree:

Hi, I want someone to remove 3 coco palm trees, takeaway and re plant or chop down with a chainsaw, in return you can take an existing bungalow palm tree aprox size 3 to 4 meters which would look great near a pool and I also have a nice fern like tree which you can also take. If intrested, please call Cathy on 0432 ... ...

If anyone of you guys want to go remove 4 palms and a fern for free let me know and I'll pass on the complete contact number

Eric Frei

Yeah, that gumtree place is looking more like Scabstree as the days go by.

I know the Yanks get a hard on over cocos palms, pay heaps for them, they did the same with houses a while back ....

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Joshua Rugg

LoL Eric.

maybe in the states but here in Hawaii it's similar to Australia. we have to many cocoplams. i do like 2 coco palm removals a month!. piecing down with block and port-a-wrap on a windy day = YEEEEHHHHAAAWWW!!

TrevMcRev

People confuse the cost of a finished transplant with the value of their tree pre-transplant.

I hate the things and actually charge extra to cut them down vs the same time working on normal woody trees.


We get a lot of calls from people wondering if we want to buy their palm.

And i won't quote transplants. Always start with a consult to cover your time & weed out the ones with no idea. Half the time they have about 1/10th of the budget required to do it properly or it's just not a suitable candidate.

Sometimes when I get a few similar sounding calls i check ebay and sure enough there is some crap, un-transplantable-without-ripping-down-fences-houses-driveways-palm

They should be blown up, along with leyland cypress.

Eric Frei

Are we talking the same palm? Here we are talking about cocos palm (Syagrus romanzoffianum) not coconut palm (Cocos nucifera).

You should get some pics of ya palm slaying, I think we'd all like that.

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Joshua Rugg

i was talking coconut palm. we have alot of tongan tree trimmers that have NO IDEA how to trim a palm properly. they just spike up wearing an old linemans belt and hack away with a machete until the damn palm looks like a feather duster with every frond trimmed past the 3 and 11 o-clock positions. i was taught your supposed to leave at least 12 fronds minimum and try to take as little green fronds as much as possible. the usage of a handsaw is better because you wont hit the trunk they dont disinfect their spikes and track crown rot disease from palm to palm.
thats where i come in. im like the only guy on the island maui that has any clue to safe rigging. i take down dead ones that dies from over trimming and disease.