Featured Plant

Profile:

Scientific Name: Ceroxylon quindiuense

Common Names: Andean Wax Palm

Family: Arecaceae / Palmae

Plant Type: Tree

Environment: Native in the cloud forests in Colombia at altitudes of 6500 to 9800 feet, this tree thrives in the cool, foggy summers and mild winters of San Francisco.

Bloom: 2-5 years in their native habitat

Uses: Ceroxylon quindiuense is suited to park, estate, and avenue planting, but other species, such as Ceroxylon parvifrons and Ceroxylon parvum, are much smaller at maturity and perfectly suited to residential gardens. Easy to grow from seed in coastal Central and Northern California.

Other: Stems of C. quindiuense are used for fences and for house walls. Extraction of wax from trunks was an important economic activity in Quindio region in the nineteenth century; it often led to the felling of entire trees. Immature plants, such as those in our South America section (planted in the early 1980s), hold their leaves in an upright, shaving-brush arrangement suited to penetrating their native cloud-forest canopy. As they reach into full sun and begin to produce flowers and fruit, crowns open into the more-familiar and graceful hemispherical silhouette seen in most palms.

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