Palm Tree Pruning
Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ in a Minute
Episode Archive
Episode #76 | Original Air Date: June 15, 2020
Related Resources
- Gardening Solutions - Pruning Palms
- Pruning Palms
- Video: How to Prune a Cabbage Palm--Lee County Extension on YouTube
- Ask IFAS: Pruning Palms
Transcript
Palms like our native cabbage palm automatically shed their dead leaves and don’t require pruning.
However, some palms aren’t self-cleaning, so you may choose to prune them periodically. Remove any brown fronds with a pole saw. Leave the green fronds alone, since they’re the energy factory for the tree.
If you hire a tree service, don’t let them climb with tree spikes, because they cause permanent damage to the trunk.
Many palms are over pruned through a practice known as “hurricane cutting,” which removes too many fronds and actually weakens trees in a windstorm.
Always remember that the point of pruning is to remove only dead growth.
Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ in a Minute is a production of the University of Florida’s Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ Program, IFAS Extension, and WUFT-FM in cooperation with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
