Acoelorraphe wrightii

Acoelorrhaphe wrightii
Seen here growing in the Palmetum of Santa Cruz on Tenerife. It originates from the tropical everglades of the Americas where it forms large spreading clumps its. We think of it as looking like a slender cross breed of several different palms; it has the bright green and fairly thin leaves of a Washingtonia, the habit and size of a Chamaerops and the brown fibrous trunks of a Trachycarpus. It is a genus in its own right however and this we use this characterisation of its appearance to help fix the species in our memory, which is quite important because we do not get to see them very often, being a tropical plant.

Left - this photo shows the infructesences protruding beyond the crowns of leaves. The flower spikes or infloresences begin life in between the leaves deep inside the crown and emerge sheathed in a protective bract. The spikes grow to about 1 or 2 metres long and after the bract opens they develop side branches with many individual flowers. The bisexual flowers mature into the light brown oval fruits we can see here, that then ripen to a black colour. As clumps of this palm mature several crowns will usually dominate in height as seen in this photo, near their maximum height of about 8m. When they get close to this height they start to show the smooth trunk beneath the fibrous layer as the old leaf bases drop. Younger trunks will then take on the ascendancy as the older ones lose their vigour.
Right - This photo shows the light silver green colour of the leaves with the light shining through them as an indication of how thin the fabric of the leaf is. This can mean that clumps in exposed areas can look a little rough as the leaves are prone to damage. When the palm is growing vigorously in its preferred wet soil conditions it can have a high turnover of leaves with many hanging dead ones forming a skirt below the crown, making quite a wild looking specimen. These palms can be beautified however by trimming dead or damaged leaves and an architectural shape can be made by cutting out some of the lower suckers to expose the taller trunks, giving the plant a prematurely aged and venerable look.