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Ceroxylon palm

Ceroxylon

Ceroxylon palm
Photo: Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada, CC BY 2.0

Ceroxylon is a genus of tall Andean wax palms with smooth, wax-covered trunks, mostly found at high altitude. Several species are grown as ornamental trees in cool, humid, mild climates with minimal frost.

Family
Arecaceae (Palm family)
Grows as
Palm, Tree
Light
Part shade, Bright indirect
Water
Water regularly while young and keep the soil evenly moist, letting the top layer dry slightly between waterings.
Soil
Well-drained, fertile, organic-rich soil or a loam-based potting mix.
Temperature
Cool to mild, roughly 10–22 °C; protect from hard frost, which damages the palms.
How easy
Moderate

About

Ceroxylon is a genus of flowering plants in the family Arecaceae, native to the Andes in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, known as Andean wax palms.

The species are almost exclusively montane and include the tallest palm (and thus tallest monocotyledon), C. quindiuense, which reaches 61 m (200 ft) in height, and species growing at the highest altitude of the palm family (Arecaceae), at more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) in elevation.

How to grow it

Several Ceroxylon species, including C. quindiuense, C. alpinum, C. vogelianum, C. ventricosum, and C. parvifrons, are cultivated as ornamental trees outside their native range in cool, humid, mild climates with minimal frosts, such as parts of Australia, coastal California, Hawai'i, New Zealand, South Africa, and coastal Western Europe. The Jose Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden in Bogotá, Colombia, contains an extensive planting of Ceroxylon palms. Other public gardens where cultivated Ceroxylon spp. can be viewed include the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, the Huntington Botanical Gardens, in Pasadena (near Los Angeles), California, and the Oakland Palmetum at the Lakeside Garden Center in Oakland, California.

Uses

In Colombia, Ceroxylon palms are frequently harvested for their wood. Ceroxylon palm leaves are also used in Palm Sunday ceremonies.

Other Ceroxylon plants

Wax palm

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ceroxylon by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

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