Return to Library Home Page


Scientific: Chamaerops humilis
Common: Mediterranean fan palm, European fan palm
Family: Arecaceae
Origin: Western Mediterranean region

Pronounciation: CHAM-er-ops hu-MIL-us

Hardiness zones
Sunset
4-24
USDA 7-11

Landscape Use: Vertical accent, great for use around pools or water features, raised planter beds, nice tropical mesic effect, excellent container palm.

Form & Character: Upright, boisterous yet controlled, semi-tropical, very clean.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, perennial monocot, slow growing to 25-feet tall with extensive basal branching to ultimately form multiple trunked large specimens unless pruned heaviliy and frequently at base to present as a standard (single trunk).

Foliage/Texture: Glaucous-green fan palm with open, flat fond blades and armed petioles, sclerotic spines on frond petioles are consistently appressed forward, frond blades often silvery speckled on abaxial (underneath) surface, ends of the frond's pinnae are split; medium to coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Dense clusters of orange to cream colored flowers on stumpy-looking stalks from axillary buds near apical meristem during early summer followed by clusters of black rounded fruit during fall, which are often persistent and obscured by fronds.

Seasonal Color: None

Temperature: Remarkably cold and heat tolerant tolerant for a palm, hardy to 5oF, can be grown in Seattle AND thrives in Phoenix. This is one environmentally tough monocot!

Light: Full sun best to moderate shade.

Soil: Tolerant

Watering: Needs supplemental water during summer.

Pruning: Little needed, only to remove dead fronds. Often though people will severely prune stems at ground height to select for a single trunk ("standard") effect.

Propagation: Seed, division of offshoots.

Disease and Pests: None

Additional comments: Mediterranean fan palm is a very clean looking palm with little litter, though one should not be deceived by the "smallness" of this palm when young as with age it will become relatively large and spreading, unless dwarfed by continued growth in a container where its roots are restricted.