Fishtail Palm Caryota mitis

Caryota mitis is a clustering palm that builds a stand of slim stems from a spreading base, staying leafy from ground level instead of running up a bare trunk. The fronds are twice divided, a trait carried by no other group of palms, and every leaflet is a lopsided wedge with a torn, chewed-off tip, so the crown reads as a mass of small fish tails rather than a feather. Frost-free gardens use it as a soft tropical screen and as courtyard planting beneath taller canopy.

Siting a fishtail clump

This is a warm-climate palm for tropical, subtropical and sheltered frost-free coastal gardens. Give it deep soil with plenty of organic matter and genuine drainage, mulch the root zone and keep turf off it, and shelter the clump from cold dry wind and from heat bouncing back off paving or a light-coloured wall. Allow for width, because a clump keeps widening at the base for as long as it lives. Set it back from paths and fences rather than tucking it into a narrow bed, and space plants about 2 m apart when you are running it as a screen. The failure mode to understand before you buy is that every stem is monocarpic. Once a stem reaches full height it flowers from the top downwards, sets fruit, and then dies, which alarms owners who assume the whole palm is going with it. It is not. New suckers keep the clump going, but you will be cutting spent stems out every few years for the life of the planting, and the fruit pulp carries oxalate crystals that sting and itch badly on bare skin.

Fishtail, golden cane or Senegal date

The three clumping palms in this batch all give a green mass from the ground up, and they are not interchangeable. Golden cane palm replaces its canes quietly and never loses a whole stem to flowering, so it is the pick for a screen you can largely leave alone. Senegal date palm builds a far heavier grove of leaning trunks and arms every frond with rigid spines, which rules it out anywhere children play. Caryota mitis sits between the two: choose it for the fishtail leaf and the low, soft outline, and only if you accept a saw job every few years. If a single-trunk specimen would suit the space better, the wider palm range covers that.

Cutting out spent stems and feeding the clump

Do the heavy work in the warm months, when the clump pushes replacement suckers fastest. Cut a finished stem off at ground level once it has stopped fruiting, and take out weak or crowded suckers at the same time so air moves through the middle of the clump. Wear gloves, long sleeves and eye protection for that job, because the fruit pulp irritates skin badly. Feed with a palm fertiliser in early spring and again in mid summer, spread across the root zone rather than piled against the stems, then top the mulch up afterwards. Clear fallen fruit if you have remnant bushland on the boundary, since seedlings do establish in warm coastal country.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 400mm up to 160L, priced from $269.00 to $999.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.