The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Livistona australis
Also called Cabbage Tree Palm, Cabbage Fan Palm, Cabbage Palm, Australian Cabbage Palm, Fan Palm, Gippsland Palm, Cabbagetree
In Singapore: Cabbage Palm, Australian Cabbage Palm (Grown in Singapore)
A tall, slender fan palm from eastern and south-eastern Australia that grows in moist forest, swampy sites and near the sea. It is grown as an ornamental and does best with moist soil and some shelter from harsh sun.
Livistona australis, the cabbage-tree palm, is an Australian plant species in the family Arecaceae. It is a tall, slender palm growing up to about 25 m in height and 0.35 m diameter. It is crowned with dark, glossy green leaves on petioles 2 m long. It has leaves plaited like a fan; the terminal bud of these is small but sweet. In summer it bears flower spikes with sprigs of cream-white flowers. The trees accumulate dead fronds or leaves, which when the plant is in cultivation are often removed by an arborist.
It is the namesake of the Tharawal people (i.e. after its native name in their language) residing on the coast of present-day Wollongong. Seeking protection from the sun, early European settlers in Australia used fibre from the native palm to create the cabbage tree hat, a distinctive form of headwear during the colonial era.
Mostly this plant is found in moist open forest, often in swampy sites and on margins of rainforests or near the sea. It is widely spread along the New South Wales coast and extends north into Queensland and southwards to eastern Victoria, growing further south than any other native Australian palm.
Livistona benthamii · Fountain palm · Ribbon Fan Palm · Livistona endauensis · Livistona
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Livistona australis 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
