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Here on the west coast, I see the palm trees starting to be abundant in Oakland, CA. I have seen very few, hardier varieties in Oregon and Washington, but not as street trees, just ornamental palms in people's yards such as the Chinese windmill palm, hardy to zone 7.
Palm trees grow pretty well in Redding, CA, and not just the hardy windmill palms.
Even some farther north .....Truth or Consquences / Elephant Butte /Hot Springs Landing, NM
have palms
Sierra Grande .....restaurant/motel....
and T or C 's pride and joy ....a newer park downtown....
"Healing Waters Plaza" ....has two rows of Washington Fan Palms....very nice....
Truth or Consequences is actually milder than Hatch ....in a local micro climate ...
between two lakes and mountain ranges on either side....solid zone 8a/8b
As for the West Coast.....Brookings, Oregon has Canary Island date palms
and farther north at Coos Bay, Oregon has some too.
This is cheating but we still have four potted palms that are doing OK on our enclosed but not heated porch outside Akron lol.
I'm not even sure what they are but two are hardy and two are tropical. The tropical ones I probably should take inside because they are starting to struggle, but so far this fall it probably wouldn't make a huge difference since we have yet to turn on our heat. So it still mostly is getting way hotter on our west facing porch in the afternoon than inside our house.
The hardy ones seem to be doing just as well as they were in the summer and may just leave them "outside." We've had two now going on 3 years (one hardy/one tropical) and two going on two years and all are still hanging in there.... had been inside from October to May
I know none would make it if planted outside but think it's some proof that the climate even in Northeast Ohio is not nearly as harsh as it was even 10 years ago. Looking at the next couple days sun/highs in the 60s means our porch will hit the 80s in the afternoon due to the greenhouse effect until at least Thursday.
I haven't seen many natural/volunteer sabal minor palms (cabbage palm) in the woods until zone 8b... In addition to temperature, central NC/VA soil is more dense and clayey than palms like.
USDA updated its zone maps for 2023. It should now be possible for sabal palmettos to naturalize along I-95 in the sandy soils around Emporia, VA and Fayetteville, NC, though they're pretty slow growers.
When the USDA map update came out, it was noted by local Wx/garden folks that needle palms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapidophyllum ) - the hardiest member of the palm botanical family (Arecaceae), but a shrub rather than than tree - will likely be added to ideas for landscapes along the MA coast from BOS to the south as well.
USDA updated its zone maps for 2023. It should now be possible for sabal palmettos to naturalize along I-95 in the sandy soils around Emporia, VA and Fayetteville, NC, though they're pretty slow growers.
I think you’re giving USDA too much credit. Their map has a lot of flaws.
You will see occasional Windmill Palms and Sabal palms (native to the Southeast) in Birmingham and Atlanta and points south. Of course, they increase in numbers as you travel south, but they don't really become common landscape features until you get pretty close to the coast. Near the coastline, you will see a lot of less hardy species like Washingtonia palms and Queen palms. These are vulnerable, though, to the worst winter freezes and can get taken out even along the upper Gulf Coast in really bad cold waves (they are fast growers and get replaced, though). Date palms are pretty good long-termers close to the coastline and occasionally a little bit inland. Butia/Pindo/Jelly palms are hardy and appear pretty far inland up to places like Montgomery, Macon, and Jackson (sometimes even more north, but they can get killed in really bad winters).
I think you’re giving USDA too much credit. Their map has a lot of flaws.
I think what's happened is that average lowest winter temperatures have increased almost everywhere, but there are still extreme freezes in many places that are bigger outliers from the average than typically occurred in the past. So a city like Dallas can have a series of winters where the coldest it gets is 18, 22, 20, 17, 21, 16, 20, 21, 22 (so this gets Dallas an 8b designation or even close to 9a), and then {{wham}} ZERO like a couple of years ago. A long run of warm winters invites less cold hardy plantings that are fine most winters or receive minimal damage but then get wiped out by an extreme event. So I agree, just looking at average winter minimum temps is not a great indicator for longer term plant hardiness when extreme events deviate so much from that number.
We have them up here in western Washington...not that they are native but they can survive...same deal up in BC.
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