Areca Palm

The Essence

"The areca palm or golden cane palm (Dypsis lutescens, now also classified as Chrysalidocarpus lutescens) is one of the most popular palms in the world — and one of the great paradoxes of horticulture. Grown by the millions as a houseplant and tropical landscape palm, it is at the same time threatened in the wild in its native Madagascar. It is a clustering palm, sending up multiple slender, smooth, bamboo-like canes that are ringed with leaf scars and flushed yellow-green to golden in good light, each topped with arching, feathery pinnate leaves. Clumps reach a few metres tall indoors and up to about 6–10 m outdoors in the tropics. Light sprays of small yellow flowers give way to yellow-to-purplish fruit. Indoors it is valued for its graceful, soft texture and its tolerance of containers and lower light, and it featured in NASA's well-known clean-air plant studies. It is frost-tender — essentially a warm-climate or indoor palm — and resents cold, drought and harsh direct sun on tender foliage."

Endangered in its native Madagascar through habitat loss, yet among the most mass-produced ornamental palms on earth — a striking example of a species far more secure in cultivation than in the wild.