Teddy Bear Palm Dypsis leptocheilos

The teddy bear palm is solitary and single-trunked, with smooth pale grey wood marked by clean rings, and above it a crownshaft coated in dense reddish-brown felt. That fur is the reason to grow it. The crown carries a modest number of long feather fronds that hang rather than stand, so the outline is soft above a very clean trunk. One plant is a specimen, not a screen, and landscapers wanting a green wall from it plant staggered groups of three or five and let the crowns knit together.

Cold is the line it will not cross

It takes part shade to full sun, moderate watering with more attention through the first summers, and grows at a moderate pace in warm districts. Soil needs to drain, ideally deep and enriched, with mulch across the root zone and away from the trunk. It is comfortable through the tropics, the subtropics and sheltered coastal New South Wales. The failure mode is frost. A cold night burns the newest fronds and can damage the felted crownshaft itself, and because that felt does not regrow on a damaged section, the palm carries the evidence for a long time; a hard frost that reaches the spear can kill a solitary palm outright, since there are no suckers to fall back on. Do not plant it in a frost hollow, at the bottom of a sloping block, or on an open inland site on the strength of one mild winter. Keep it out of funnelled or salt-laden wind as well, which shreds the long fronds.

Teddy bear, redneck, or something drier

The palm it is most often confused with is redneck palm, and stock does move under the wrong label. Redneck is the stockier plant with a shorter, thicker collar and stiffer fronds held closer to horizontal; teddy bear is slimmer, with the more obviously furred tapering crownshaft and a softer, more pendulous crown. If you are matching an existing planting, compare crowns before you buy. For a warmer, drier, more open position where neither felted palm would be happy, triangle palm is the Dypsis that handles sun and sharp drainage and gives geometry instead of fur. Put simply: teddy bear for a sheltered garden where the crownshaft is seen close up, redneck where the planting needs bulk, and triangle palm for dry, open ground. All three sit in the advanced tree range.

Protecting the fur, feeding the crown

Prune very little. Remove fronds only when fully brown, cutting cleanly just above the crownshaft, and never trim into the felted collar or blast it with a pressure washer, since the tomentum rubs off and does not come back. Work in the warm months so cuts dry. Feed with a controlled release palm fertiliser that includes potassium and magnesium in early spring and again in mid summer, spread over the whole root zone. On sandy soil, yellow and frizzled older fronds are almost always a potassium shortage, so feed ahead of the problem rather than waiting for the symptom.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 9 sizes, from 180mm up to 285L, priced from $43.95 to $1439.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.