Palm Lily Cordyline stricta

Palm lily grows as a slowly thickening clump of slim upright canes carrying narrow matt dark green leaves, an eastern Australian rainforest plant rather than a Pacific island one. Its distinctive quality is shade tolerance: it holds colour and form in light levels that make brighter cordylines stretch and fade. Sprays of small mauve flowers open in spring, followed by dark purple berries that birds strip. It is planted for vertical line in tight shaded spaces: under a deck, along a shaded wall, or in pots on a covered courtyard.

Shade tolerance, and the trap of dry soil

It suits warm temperate through subtropical gardens across the eastern seaboard and does well in Perth with shelter, taking light frost once established but not a hard inland one. Soil should be composted, mulched and holding moisture, and it takes to pots readily because the root system is not aggressive enough to lift paving or split a container. Mass it at around three plants to the square metre so the canes read as a thicket rather than a row of individuals, and let it grow into a soft screen where a hedge would be too heavy. The failure mode is an open dry position. In full sun with soil that dries between waterings the leaves yellow off, the plant looks permanently tired and the clump stops producing new canes, and no fertiliser corrects that while the roots stay dry. If you are putting it in sun, commit to irrigation and heavy mulch from the start. In shade it needs far less attention, which is the position it is really for.

The green one in a coloured genus

Do not buy this expecting foliage colour. Cordyline fruticosa Negra gives you near black burgundy straps, but it needs warmth and good light to hold that colour and it will not do what stricta does in deep shade. Red Star is the cold hardy trunk forming option for open sun and wind, and it goes backwards in the shaded courtyard where stricta thrives. Pick stricta when the position is dark, sheltered and narrow, and you want height, a tropical feel and a fine vertical line without colour or bulk.

Cutting canes back in warm weather

Canes go bare and leggy with age. Cut them back hard at any height you like during the warm months, from late spring through summer, and new shoots break from the old cane within a few weeks so the clump comes back thicker than it was. Stagger the cuts across a clump over two seasons rather than taking everything at once, which keeps the planting looking furnished while it recovers. Avoid cutting in cold weather, when regrowth stalls and cut canes can rot back. Feed in early spring and again in midsummer with a slow release fertiliser, and top up mulch at the same time. See more in tropical plants.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 5 sizes, from 100mm up to 300mm, priced from $16.95 to $109.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to low water gardens.