I'm west of the St. Johns and it got to 18 at my house in Jacksonville. Several nights were very low 20s. Duration of the freezing temps was the worst though. I hope the Saint Augustine Coco pulls through.

I heard this morning that in general, north Florida had the 6th coldest winter ever and Miami-it's 2nd coldest.

I'm dubious-but hoping- that coconut makes it. Its grown like a champ to get that much trunk in a few short years. The Newport beach coco is pushing 25~.

if this coconut makes it, it shows you how cold hardy the coconut could be. When queen palms 1st were introduced, people thought they were as tropical as a coconut or royal, people tested it further north of the tropics and it made it. almost every other house here in jax has a queen palm these days. you never know, maybe with a few better winters in the future, you will see more of these tropicals further north than cocoa beach or even daytona. It is all about were you plant the palm in your yard. if that coconut palm was planted in the sand on st. Augustine Beach, it would be dead already I THINK. I dont know if i am right on that one, but protection is everything. and, from what i have heard, that coconut as had ZERO protection since it has been there.

Ouch!
Still see some green there!(-:

WoW! Very impressive! Somebody should inform the property owner of the palm's fame so that they don't end up removing it, thinking it's dead. If I lived in the area i would sneak it some fertilizer to help it along. Thanks for the update.

Hmm, looks pretty similar to the coconuts around me. I think it will survive. If it survives this winter, i think it may be long term in that spot. If it fruits, I definitely want to try the seed out here.

I try to keep the glass half full but that looks pretty fried to me. I know there is a little green but I wouldnt bet on that making it. I just came back from Kissimmee (which is Central FLA) and it was sad to see even huge CIDP's that were dead and they are usually very hardy. FLA had a bad winter this year. I planted a Fuji Fan Palm and it might not make it and that is Fort Meyers area. Only ones that came through with flying colors were the Washy's (and trachy's but there werent that many). Anyway, hopefully that coco will come back to life.

this coconut palm look almost identical like it did this time last year. i think it will come back, plus the core is still gren which means the tree has not died

We won't know for sure until summer if it survives or not. For all we know, there may be internal rotting of the spear or other damages caused by fungus and/or bugs. I hope not, but this winter was about as extreme, in terms of length, as they can get. The record low for St. Auggie is much lower, I believe it is between 12 and 16 degrees.

This winter was harsh in Jacksonville, FL.
I live on the west side out towards Maxville, we saw temps as low as 13f a few times.
My 2 coco's survided with a lot of help, but should be back to normal by June, they have stage fright at the moment, the spears are as green as can be and have 2 new fronds on the way.
I have planted some majesty palms in front, they are just going brown and frizzling up, they have plenty of water and fertilizer, maybe the ground was still to cold for them, not sure.

rsa2usa, you have 2 coco's?? in a pot or planted in the ground? send a pic if u can. how long have u had them??

Both Coco's are planted in the ground, I bought them during the harsh weather in January and planned on hauling them in and out until summer, that plan failed when I got home and realized they could hardly be rolled off and into the hole where they sat for the rest of January until now, I had to incubate them, wrapped them in freeze cloth and put a heater in each one to keep the trunk warm, the outer fronds look like hell, but the center is green and ready for the tropical feel.

Send a pic if u can rsa2usa! I have a coconut palm in a pot i purchased in january also. i bought it in cocoa beach. i also live in jacksonville

At least they made it, and not only did they make it in one of florida's harshest winters ever, but they were planted in the middle of the winter and still survived! As long as you give it protection when it needs it, it sounds like it will be there gracing your yard for many years!

Good luck, and post some pics when you get the chance! :)

Here is a picture of my coco.

Here is a link that might be useful:

nice pic!!! it is very much alive!!! were did u purchase them??

It is not where you purchase them from, it is the blood and freeze that you go through keeping them heated.
Trust me I am ready to toss them after summer, it costs a lot in heating and hard to keep them covered.

what type of heaters did u get??? i will need one for my foxtail palm this coming winter

At what temps did you heat them at? Right now my coco's are still small enough to be inside for the winter. My house temps had been on average around 68f-72f.

Encephalartos.
They look pretty good considering the horrible winter they had to go through.
Maybe you need a different way of heating them if its too expensive. I cover my palms with x mas lights, a dark colored frost cloth, and a garbage bin (you will probably need something taller than a garbage bin for yours since they are pretty tall. It keeps them a good 15-20 degrees warmer than outside, but doesnt ever let them over heat if you take it off when temps are above 55F. I dont think it really uses that much energy as long as you do take off the lights during the day when temps are above freezing again.

Good luck. I think they are going to get pretty tall by the end of this summer.

I bought the only 2 little space heaters I could find at walgreens in Mccleney, they are cheap, but seemed to have done the job. What I did was take 4 4foot stakes and put painters plastic around them, put the frost cloth over the top and used saftey pins to close the sides, then just stapled the bottom to the steaks, so it did not allow for a consistent temp, but basically still allowed them to breath and get natural light during the day, I tied the fronds up protecting the inner fronds with the brown outer ones. The heaters stopped the cloth from freezing.
I did start off using spot lighs, but thought we needed more heat to be circulated.
This year we will see what happens, they are really going to have to impress me to keep them and do the same next winter.

I wouldnt be surprised if you get a healthy full crown from them by the end of summer. If I had a coconut with a beautiful full crown, I would keep it alive for sure, so I hope it exceeds your expectations.

Good luck!

I stopped to see they St. Augustine coco, they have cut all the fronds off, so it just looks like a trunk, time will tell.

The real shame is that they decapitated that big sago that was planted next to the coconut. It was huge, and probably worth lots of money. You can still see the trunk in some of the above pics, and you can see the whole sago in old pics posted previously of this palm. If they kept it, they would have something nice and green and tropical to look at right now. Not to mention there's an artificial palm on the porch. Why would somebody have an artificial palm outdoors in Florida?

IB, they do that to likely mitigate the asian scale, which has taken over most of them.

They have an artificial palm on the porch because they are white trash.

I took a ride to Vero Beach to see what the damage was like there. I only saw 2 or 3 dead ones heading down FL-60, but most had about 50%-60% leaf burn. I did find one in a VERY good microclimate (right on the beach front just off the walkway on the left side of the parking lot) that has been there a while that had no damage and is putting out an inflorescence already. It had an old, immature nut beside it.

In addition, the south side of the 2001 building had a coco tight up against it that still had live, green nuts on it. There were too immature at this point for harvesting though :(

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1125520}}

kinzyki, that is a very nice coconut palm! with the winter we just had, it looks great! My in-laws live in cocoa beach, and i was there this past weekend and the coconut palms there were very very badly damaged. thee were coconut palm that are 25 feet tall that looked dead. this might have been the worst winter here in florida in 30 years

Central Florida had their coldest winter on record...official word from the NWS. In terms of median temp from dec 21 to march 21.

All I can say is that if that coconut tree in St. Augustine
is not dead, it must be a mutant. I don't believe any coconut can survive the temps that St.A saw this past January.
If it does live, a lot of people. including me, would pay big bucks for a nut from it. The link below shows Jan. temps in
St. Aug for Jan. 2010

Here is a link that might be useful:

let it RIP

Well, they trimmed it all back, and unshockingly, the spear is gone. Oh well, pretty while it lasted.

yeah, i seen it the other day. i wonder if they are going to remove it?

I hope they give another one a try, or at the very least plant another beautiful palm in its place.

Thanks for the updates on this palm. Too bad it suffered the fate of many other out of place palms in Florida.

Considering the temps even King palms hardy to the mid 20's and that can handle 6 months of cool California winter and spring would have been killed in St Augustines big freeze. Still,it got big a for a good while. I would plant another for another 10~ year run.

This was a terrible year for growing palms and there has been allot of death. I lost allot of palms from fungal rot because of the long cold spell. When we say a palm is hardy to a certain temp that is very vague because there are many more factors to how cold hardy it is. How long was the cold, how many days it is cold after the extreme event and so on. If we buy a palm that some one says endured a certain temp and we believe ours will be ok at that temp we might be in for a rude awakening. My extreme temps here was 27 one night (a few hours) and 30s a few other days but the days below normal was the real killer. This coconut palm might live and die next year from the cold. Once they get hit like this year they don't get tougher they get weaker the next winter. If it don't get to cold next winter that will help. Also the cold in California is different than Fl and cant be compared accurately.

I lost my coconut today. The spear was brown, but didn't pull out. I wiggled the tree, and the damn thing snapped at the base! I replaced it with a large windmill palm instead, ha!

jbr999,
I really enjoyed the snapshot of the January weather. I looked mine up, and my lowest temperature this year was 26F. Tons of days where the highs were in the 40s and 50s though... and one where the highs and lows were both in the 30s.

There is a big house down the highway from me by the lake that I believe has a coconut palm. I'll try to get a pic of it. It is in a protected environment (walls on all four sides but not enclosed on top). I can't say they did nothing/anything to protect it.

I compared the temperatures in January for my location to the ones in Vero where I found the very healthy coconut palms. The coastal influence provided just enough moderation to keep the temperatures where the tree could survive. They were sited in very good microclimates, with a lot of protection from the north wind.

kinzyjr, please take a pic of that coconut palm! i want to see it!!!! Were do u live????

How did the coconuts in the St. Petersburg area fair through the winter. About 10 years ago, there were some 30-40ft. tall green Malayans growing in the yard on the south side of a hotel at the southern end of St. Pete towards the area where you get on the Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay to the Bradenton area.

The st pete cocos are in bad bad shape. Even an hour south of there on the barrier islands of sarasota where I had my wedding 3 weeks ago, most of the cocos got fried. And were talking oceanfront palms in SW florida!

The cocos in the urban core of Miami got a little damage, and noted pics recently from Miami Beach show some damage. Nobody but the Keys were spared this year.

Here is my green Malayan dwarf as of this afternoon. I'm glad I opted to wrap it during januarys cold blasts. Lowest it saw inside the covering was 30.0, outside the covering my yard dropped to 27.3 on 2 nights.

Your coconut looks really good considering the long cold
winter it went thru. How old is it? It looks like it has had
some inflorescences already. Do dwarfs flower earlier than talls, or just shorter?
BTW where in Central Fla are you?

I think your coconut is looking great. Lots of nice green leaves and it looks like it is more than healthy enough to create a nice full crown this summer (maybe some fruit again too!)

Good luck!

I live in Windermere, about 9 miles west of downtown Orlando.
The urban heat effect and being surrounded by many lakes, in addition
to one right across the street to my north, helps me in the winter. The official Orlando low this winter was one night of 29. I was a degree and a half less on two nights, but areas outside the urban core saw mid to upper teens.

Orlando has a really nice climate and considering how far away it is from the coast, it has very mild weather. Some areas by the coast (like tampa) which is south of orlando, got the same or cooler weather.

I know that the theme parks in orlando (especially universal studios) has lots of tender plants that are growing very well (not sure how they are doing now though). Some of the plants I have seen there are...
screw pines (Pandanus utilis) which was pretty tall and quite a few years old
Peace lilies (Spathiphyllum wallisii) these were also pretty big and were in full shade
Tri-color hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum) which was very large and heathy
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, which were large and flowering well, but not as healthy as they could be
bromeliads, lots of different types from small airplants on the trees to large ones mounted on the trunk of the palms.
Foxtail palms (Wodyetia bifurcata), they were large and healthy at the time and also right by a pond which probably help protect it from a frost
And lots of others that I am forgetting too. They all seemed really happy before this freeze but I wonder if they are okay now (or if the park protected them from the freezes).
I also think there are coconut palms in Sea World which are still alive (I think) and protected from extreme cold.

Good luck!

This last winter was not bad in urban areas because we didn't have strong cold fronts with allot of wind. If we get cold fronts like we had in the 80s the heat island will mean nothing. Every coconut in Orlando and the surrounding area will be toast. I hope we never see that again. I hope Al can make his words come true or it seems we are getting colder not warmer.

jason_2010,
I went over to take a pic of what looked like a coco (all I could see was a few of the leaves at the top near a balcony) and it turned out to be an Alexander palm hidden behind the one section of the house. Doh!

I stay in Lakeland, which is great for palms, but not for cocos :(

I know I'm bumping an old thread here, but it's good to see your coconut is doing well, Paul. I remember years back when you planted it. Good thing you wrapped it up! (lol) Like you stated, almost all of the coconut palms in Pinellas were fried pretty badly. Thankfully yours is still small enough to wrap!

Do I see cocos being planted in Jax? Yikes!! Poor trees.