March’s Creation Care Plant of the Month: The California Fan Palm Tree
It was pretty easy to choose the California Fan Palm Tree as our Creation Care Plant of the Month for March.
We're fortunate that palms (of several species) help beautify both of our parish campuses, especially during this Liturgical season. They can help us imagine what it must have been like to be surrounded by people waving greenery and celebrating Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
For our "plant of the month", we decided to focus more narrowly on the Fan Palm species because it’s native to California (in fact, it’s the only native palm species in the Western US). This means that it’s a super-gracious host to many local insects and birds, and helpful for our environment.
We also like it’s pretty, fan-shaped fronds, and can imagine ourselves waving them to celebrate the arrival of Jesus.
Palms signal life in the desert, Jesus is our life.
California Fan Palms can grow to 50 - 65 feet tall. They are cold tolerant and very, very drought tolerant.
The tree is characterized by a sturdy, column shaped trunk and waxy, evergreen leaves. It produces white tubular flowers in the summer. Later, it offers black, pea-sized fruit, which is both abundant and nutritious.
Palms are popular with the hooded oriole (among other species of insects and birds). In our area, you can often spot oriole nests on the underside of palm fans from April until mid-August.
Regarding tree care, it’s important to be extra cautious when pruning palms for two reasons:
- Don’t over prune, which harms the tree and can even kill it
- Avoid pruning until the end of summer – the birds are nesting!
(In fact, please be careful when pruning any trees from now until later in the summer, to avoid disturbing or harming the birds. Delay until fall or winter if you can).
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