NO. This is a common practice and I hate it. A Queen Palm looks beautiful with a full crown of fronds. Here in L.A, I've seen unbelievable Queens bursting with healthy fronds, but I've also seen over trimmed Queens with two fronds and it looks really stupid. The problem is uneducated gardeners and lack of instruction and training. I've seen no evidence that cutting fronds off a Queen Palm induces speedy growth. It's a palm, and all palms prefer to have a full head of fronds. I have two Queens and I told my gardeners, do not cut anything off unless I tell you to. If they keep doing this you will see thinning of the trunk. Don't let this happen again. Good luck!

I must say , years back when considering various palms to try indoors from a specialist palm nursery I'd order from in Florida, I was looking for some that would develope a nice trunk at a young age , but still not be too tall for my low ceilings at a young age, and I did sort of find a couple of those, though the "girths" aren't anywhere near what mature ones would have of course. On the other hand my Chinese fan palm only grew at the base for many years as the base increased in diamter over that time, til finally it started to show the "true" trunk with a diameter of six or eight inches, but still only perhaps eight to ten inches of true trunk below the crown shaft. I think many of the other plams tend to be "slow" in showing a trunk as well, though the crownshaft and of course the fronds are very lovely long before the trunks are formed!! The topic does remind me of the question, "Where does that crownshaft end technically , to become the trunk below? I think by definition the crowshaft for most varieties is the area extending from the lowest leaves on the trunk, to the top, but then of course those "lowest" leaves on some varieties that don't shed the old fronds naturally without some help, may extend all the way to the base of the palm , and I'm sure there's a true trunk under those dead fronds , if you get my meaning?? I see doing a little more research, the term "crownshaft" is used to apply to the way the leaf bases wrap around the trunk from the oldest fronds in the case of pinnate palms "only" I guess, so I'm not sure what the crown is called in the case of fan type palms or is that just plain "crown"?? Clearly there's a lot to be learned in the world of palms for me, when it just comes to understanding the specialized terms , when describing them in general!

M Hello anyone. Here are my experiences. I live in San Diego, California and after the wild fires destroyed my entire house, I rebuilt and re-landscaped with palm trees. After knowing nothing about those plants and some failures, I now have a palm tree "forest" in my front yard. So...king palms look magnificant in "singles"; avoid washingtonians because in a few years they will too tall to cut/trim. Avoid queen palms because they must be trimmed when they get tall. Windmill palms are trouble free but must be trimmed after they reach 15' high or so. I went to Target garden center and purchased several kentia palms (3 plants in each pot) for $19 each and took them home and very very carefully seperated them individually and planted them outside as understory palms. The first 20 months they grew slowly but didn't burn and were fine. Now the sun doesn't bother them at all and they are growing faster and faster. Kentia palms and king palms grow wonderfully and somewhat fast indoors as house plants. Have them but never over water them. Use palm fertilizer and occasionally fish fertilizer. Beautiful house plants....then move them outside when too large and acclimate them and put them into the ground in your landscaping. A good outdoor palm is the fox tail palm...it also is self -cleaning. But good house palms for fast beautiful growth are kentia, king, and cat palms.

I don't have enough info to decide whether it needs to be removed: space available, distance from buildings, utilities, sidewalks, etc, etc, but I typically don't have trees removed until they seem likely to soon cause an issue. However, I live in a rural area, and considerations of cost of removal, other issues such as location of hazards such as overhead wires, buildings, other trees, etc. may influence your decision and are probably different in your more populated area.