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Roystonea regia
Also called Florida Royal Palm, Royal Palm
In Singapore: Florida Royal Palm, Royal Palm, Cuban Royal Palm, 王宗, 大王椰子, 高王椰子 (Grown in Singapore)
A tall, stout-trunked ornamental palm from the Caribbean, Florida and Mexico, grown widely in tropical and subtropical gardens. It needs full sun, warmth and reliably moist soil to thrive.
Roystonea regia, commonly known as the royal palm, Cuban royal palm, or Florida royal palm, is a species of palm native to Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida, and parts of Central America. A large and attractive palm, it has been planted throughout the tropics and subtropics as an ornamental tree. Although it is sometimes called R. elata, the conserved name R. regia is now the correct name for the species. The royal palm reaches heights from 15–24 m (50–80 ft) tall. Populations in Cuba and Florida were long seen as separate species, but are now considered a single species.
Widely planted as an ornamental, R. regia is also used for thatch, construction timber, and in some forms of traditional medicine. The fruit is eaten by birds and bats (which disperse the seeds) and fed to livestock.
Roystonea regia is found in Central America, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), the Lesser Antilles, The Bahamas, southern Florida, and Mexico (in Veracruz, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán). William Bartram described the species from Lake Dexter, along the St. Johns River in the area of modern Lake and Volusia Counties in central Florida, an area north of its modern range, suggesting a wider distribution in the past.
Roystonea regia has been planted throughout the tropics and subtropics as an ornamental. The seed is used as a source of oil and for livestock feed. Leaves are used for thatching and the wood for construction. The roots are used as a diuretic, and for that reason they are added to tifey, a Haitian drink, by Cubans of Haitian origin. They are also used as a treatment for diabetes.
[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 Roystonea regia 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.
