pretty hard to overwater a king palm unless you have super heavy, poorly draining soils... plants look underwatered and possibly sunburned. May still recover

Dave's Garden has a nice section on edible palm fruits at http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3242/ Here's a quote: "If you want to be absolutely accurate, almost all palm fruits are edible, though I would not really recommend eating most of them. Some are toxic however, and have high levels of oxalates in them so these are palm fruits that definitely should be avoided" unfortunately, the king palm isn't listed there one way or the other. http://www.junglemusic.net/Palm_Seeds_and_Fruit/Palm_Tree_Seeds_and_Fruit.html has a list of edible palm seeds near the end of the page, but also doesn't list the King Palm. They point out that some edible palms produce "fruit" where you eat the fleshy seed coating, like dates; others produce "nuts" where you eat the inside of the seed, like coconut. http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/edible-palms.html lists edible hardy palm fruits, but doesn't mention King palm. So, not sure if they're edible. I would guess that they're probably neither pleasant nor toxic to eat, or there would be more info about them.

Yeah, I have a lot of bismarkia seed germinating now as well - green form and blue - which I'll have as backups. The beccario is loving the heat actually, and loving the extra water I give it. I do have a rhopalostylis baueri var. cheesemanii seedling that didn't even blink during winter. The problem I foresee with that species is that they might dislike our summer heat. I saw some large, bulging ones at Golden Gate Palms. Maybe I'll be bold enough one day to try one that size! Here's a shot from a few weeks ago. Phoenix reclinata in the back, beccariophoenix alfredii in the center. AND ... I know these will get crowded as they age, but I don't really mind that at all... The blue circles are dypsis decipiens. The yellow arrow points to bismarkia nobilis. You can just make out the tips of one of the fronds on it.

on vacation somewhere ... i recall sometime during mid week ... it was palm pruning time.. and some monkey man shimmied up the 30 to 50 foot trunk.. and hacked off the old dead fronds??? ... to avoid fronds falling and crushing guests i suppose .... is this the type of palm that will need that ... and how long will it take to get to that size ... my point.. if i have one .. is this really a tree for a small backyard ...??? btw .. in a tree vs wood fence smack down ... i would put my money on the tree ... rather than the fence.. lol ... ken