Princess Palm Dictyosperma album

The hurricane palm is solitary, with a slender ringed trunk, a clean crownshaft and a compact crown of neatly arching fronds, new leaves pushing out flushed reddish before they harden green. Its trick is structural: the fronds fold and stream in a gale rather than shredding, which is how it survives cyclones on the Mascarene Islands east of Madagascar, where it is now rare in the wild. Because the crown stays small and it sheds its own fronds, it is used in narrow courtyards and beside pools.

A cyclone palm in an Australian coastal garden

Grow it in frost-free coastal gardens from northern New South Wales up. Soil should be deep and free draining, with sand no obstacle, and mulch across the root zone. Wind is the one thing this palm handles better than almost anything else in the batch, so exposed seaside positions that shred other crowns suit it, and it will take salt-laden air. The failure mode is cold rather than wind. A cold, dry inland site marks the crown over winter, the leaflets brown along the edges, and the palm sits sullen through spring instead of pushing new leaves, so it never builds the clean outline it is grown for. Do not plant it in a frost hollow, an open paddock corner or an elevated inland block on the strength of its wind tolerance. Warmth plus moving air is the combination it wants, and a coastal position gives it both. Set it clear of walls and gutters as well, since a palm that survives by flexing needs the room to do it.

Hurricane palm against the other self-cleaning palms

All three of the self-shedding crownshaft palms here look related at a glance, and they separate by size. Veitchia joannis is much taller and heavier with broad drooping leaflets, so it needs a large site and distance from buildings. Solitaire palm is slimmer and lighter, and it wants shelter, so it fills lightwells and side setbacks but suffers where wind funnels. Dictyosperma sits between them: compact enough for a courtyard, tough enough for an exposed coastal bed, which is the combination that is otherwise hard to find. On an exposed coastal block it is the one of the three still looking composed a week after a blow. Larger specimens are grouped in the 100L range.

Almost no pruning, steady feeding

The crownshaft does the tidying. Spent fronds abscise and drop by themselves, so there is no ladder work and no brown skirt, and the only pruning worth doing is removing a frond that has died and hung up, plus fruit stalks if they are dropping over paving. Never cut green fronds off a small-crowned palm to make it look neater; it has few to spare. Feed with a controlled release palm fertiliser that includes potassium and magnesium, in early spring and again in mid summer, spread over the root zone rather than at the trunk, and renew the mulch after each application.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 300mm up to 160L, priced from $129.00 to $889.00 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.