Oil Palm Elaeis guineensis

Most Australians meet the African oil palm as an ingredient rather than a plant. Elaeis guineensis is a heavy, solitary feather palm with long arching pinnate fronds, a broad crown, and an old trunk that stays clothed in the stubs of shed fronds rather than cleaning itself. Its most awkward feature is armament: the leaf bases carry fierce spines that turn every pruning job into a serious one. Here it is a collector's palm and a large scale landscape feature for frost free gardens in the far north.

Heat, humidity and the cold that ends it

It comes from West and Central African lowlands and wants those conditions repeated: real heat, high humidity and a deep soil that stays moist without being swampy. Far north Queensland can give it that. In a subtropical garden it will grow, slowly and without much conviction, and the failure mode is blunt. Anywhere that gets frost, it will not last a winter, and there is no sheltering a palm of this size through one. Fruit production belongs to the wet tropics and should never be the reason for buying it. The other question to settle before planting is scale. The crown gets wide, the fronds are heavy when they fall, and the spines mean a fallen frond cannot simply be dragged off a lawn one handed. Give it open ground with clearance on every side, well away from paths, pool surrounds, paving, parked cars and anything with a roof. Plant it into a wide, well prepared hole with the root ball sitting level, and keep the ground around it clear of competition while it settles in.

The palm that needs a paddock, not a courtyard

If the appeal is a big feather crown but the garden is smaller or further south, Allagoptera caudescens does a similar job at a manageable scale, with a slim trunk and a silver frond underside. If people walk past it daily, Pinanga kuhlii is the palm with nothing sharp on it. The closest comparison to Elaeis in this range is not a palm at all: weeping willow is the other plant here that has to be sited before it is bought, both for its size and for the trouble it causes when it goes in the wrong place. If what you actually want is a plant with a story rather than a plant with a footprint, buy the Allagoptera and read about the oil trade instead.

Frond removal, protective gear and heavy feeding

Prune only what is dead, and treat it as a two person job with long sleeves, gauntlet gloves and eye protection. Cut fronds with a saw or long handled loppers, drop them clear and cart them off whole rather than reaching in among the spines. Do not strip green fronds to tidy the crown, since a reduced crown weakens the palm and slows everything that follows. In the tropics it feeds heavily: a complete palm fertiliser carrying potassium, magnesium and boron, spread across the root zone through the warm months, repeated two or three times over the wet season and kept off the trunk itself.

Choosing a size

This plant is supplied in one size, 400mm, at $199.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot it arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.