BOTANICAL NAME: Sabal palmetto
COMMON NAME: Palmetto or Cabbage palm
COUNTRY of ORIGIN: United States, southeastern portion
COLD HARDINESS: Our beloved Sabal palmetto is a palm for zone 8 and warmer climates... it will begin to show damage in the mid to low teens. The Cabbage palm can recover from lower temps, but is generally shown to be totally defoliated or killed outright by low single digit temperatures.
They are a little hardier if grown in the same spot from a small container vs. being transplanted as a mature specimen from a much warmer zone..one that it has been growing in for the first 30 years of it's life.
Yes, the container grown--->into the ground tree takes years of commitment as opposed to getting instant gratification with a Florida hurricane cut specimen...(less of course waiting for it to re-grow a crown) ...but container trees have better, healthier, more intensive root structures...they usually have the nicest, fullest crowns, and are better acclimated to your cooler climate in the long run.
SIZE AND CHARACTERISTICS: She's the state tree of South Carolina, as well as Florida. Sabal palmettos are planted all up and down the southeastern seaboard though. Should you ever visit Florida, coastal Georgia, or South Carolina, this is the tree that you see everywhere you look... a tall stately tree with a medium green mop-top of costapalmate leaves.
It grows Natively as far north as Bald Head Island in North Carolina and is the only other N.C. native palm along with Sabal minor.
You find the trunks either fully 'booted', that is covered with old persistent leaf bases that form a crisscross pattern as they go...or they can be stripped clean to reveal a gray trunk as smooth as any telephone pole. You will also find them 'partially booted' , with boots up top, but stripped clean some distance up the tree, starting from the bottom.
