Bamboo palm (Reed Palm) plant is one of the few plants that may create a sense of calm and tranquillity to your house. Some individuals relate this to the palms’ health advantages.
Regardless of why you choose to grow bamboo palm as houseplant, there’s no doubting its beauty and glory. After all, how often can you boast about having a palm tree in your home that doesn’t require continuous attention and maintenance?
After all, this beauty and glory should be pointed out on the dark side. The bamboo palm fruit is very hazardous to people as well as pets. Thus, while you establish this magnificent cane palm, you will need to take measures, as we will detail later.
If you’re new to bamboo palm, this is the spot to learn all you need to know about them, including how to cultivate and care for them.
About Bamboo Palm Aka Reed Palm
Bamboo palms (Chamaedorea seifrizii) are a unique kind of palm. The trunk of this palm, which is native to Costa Rica and the tropics of South America, is green, like bamboo. In fact, calling it a trunk is a stretch because it resembles a reed more than a trunk.
The normal height of this “trunk” is 4 feet, but it has the potential to grow to 12 feet in the appropriate conditions and without frequent trimming. The palm’s canopy may easily span 3 to 5 feet in diameter. The reedy trunks develop to about one inch in thickness because they develop in clusters.
You’ll need to supply the plant with conditions that are comparable to those found in its natural environment in order to maintain it growing at a steady rate. This clustered parlor palm needs a steady supply of moisture as well as filtered light. This guarantees that the plant does not quickly overrun its container. This palm is only appropriate for zones 10 and 11 if you want to grow it outside.
The first blooms appear in late spring or early summer. The blossoms might be yellow or orange in colour. After pollination, a little green fruit grows immediately out of the centre of the female flower, thus they don’t stay in bloom for long. When ripe, the fruit becomes black and is extremely poisonous.
Uses of Bamboo Palm
Bamboo palm is the more than just a houseplant that adds a sense of the tropics in to your home. This cane palm offers more health advantages and aesthetic value than most people realise. The following are a few of these advantages.
- Health
It’s no secret that the air around a bamboo palm smells cleaner and fresher. That isn’t a figment of your imagination. This plant operates as a filter, purifying and sucking toxins and impurities by eliminating odours and reduces the amount of pollutants in the air in your home. Carbon monoxide, chloroform, formaldehyde, and benzene are among the contaminants targeted by the palm.
- Decoration
The decorative value of Reed Palm is another major advantage. The beautiful and shabby trunks that grow in clusters (that is why, sometime it’s called Clustered Parlor Palm) offer to the environment a touch of colour. It’s still a small plant for indoor production, despite its size. Moreover, the palm makes less mess. It is not attracting pests or shedding leaves at the same level as your normal plant. The blossoms on the backdrop of dark green, silky stems are brilliant and cheery. Overall, the bamboo palm suits every area of your home, without robbing attention of other more flashy plants. I think this is safe to say.
How to Grow Bamboo Palm From Seed
Bamboo palm still has one thing in common with the rest of their family even if it doesn’t like it; it takes so long for a seed to begin. Not that the germination rate of the seeds is poor. You don’t, but for the bamboo palm to become a mature and sturdy household takes years. The palm of a seedling is an easier and time-consuming procedure. And I mean a young palm between 2.5 and five years of age. I mean a seedling. This is the duration of the beginning of these palms.
Here’s how to accomplish it if you have time and patience to start from the seeds.
- You can start your seeds whenever you choose. They normally take 6 to 9 months to germinate, so you’ll be waiting a long time.
- Avoid attempting to get seeds from mature bamboo palm fruits. Because these fruits are deadly, it’s best to get the seeds online.
- In a shallow tray with numerous sections, place the seeds. The roots of various seeds will not become intertwined and suffocate each other in this manner.
- Plant the seeds approximately a half-inch deep in the potting mix after filling the divisions with potting mix. Fill the holes with water and cover the seeds.
- Until the seeds germinate, keep the tray in a warm environment with a temperature of roughly 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
- During this period, keep the soil wet and avoid exposing the tray to bright sunshine or frigid breeze.
- You may transplant the seeds to tiny pots filled with the same planting media once they have germinated.
- Reduce the temperature in the vicinity of the seedlings and provide them with filtered light.
- After roughly a year, the stalks will begin to develop and the roots will begin to settle.
Bamboo Palm Care
- Soil
Bamboo palm grows well in well-drained, porous, and aerated soil. Although sandy soil has high drainage, it does not keep moisture for long enough, leaving the palm roots dry. Clay soil is also not a desirable medium since it is too heavy and stops the palm’s root system from properly growing. In most circumstances, using a specific potting mix or amending the soil would be preferable. To create the proper texture and structure, add peat moss to the soil in a 1:2 ratio. If the porousness of the medium is still an issue, add perlite and shredded orchid bark for good measure. In addition, examine the pH of the soil and bring it into neutrality or acidity. These palms should have readings of 6.0 to 7.5 on average.
- Temperature And Light
The tropical bamboo palms are hard, and yet promote high temperatures in zones 10 and 11. The palms have a low frost or refrigerated temperature tolerance. So make sure in the room the temperature is high between the 70s and the mid-80s Farenheit. The bamboo palm, unlike other palms that grow and flourish in direct sunlight, requires filtered or dappled light. If exposed to direct sunshine, it does not do well. This might lead to brown leaf tips and fading leaves. Keep a lace curtain with the potted palm behind the window or decrease the light in the room.
- Water
Remember how porous you were trying in a bamboo palm pot to get that planting medium? Now it’s only a matter of keeping that medium wet. Bamboo palms flourish in damp environments with damp soil. Because this can be an issue, it’s preferable to stay on the safe side. That is, rather than overwatering the plant, you should leave the top one inch of soil dry between irrigations. Palm roots are vulnerable to both wet and dry soil conditions. Before you irrigate the soil, make sure it’s dry. Hold off on the water until it dries out if it depresses readily beneath your finger. Go to the root and don’t allow wetness to touch the floor or flowers when watering the plant, since the plant can cause a fungal infestation.
- Fertilizer
In spring and summer, bamboo palm trees sprout, flowers and fruit. They sleep for the remainder of the year. And they need to be encouraged in the form of fertilizers because of their slow development rate. Begin your fertilization in spring brightly and early. Use an equilibrated 10-10-10 fertilizer and disperse the grains over the medium. Hold off fertilization as the plant’s resources build fruits after the flowers pollinate.
- Pests
Bamboo palms attract aphids, mealybugs, scale, whiteflies, and spider mites, much like other house plantations. The same thing you can do with them. When you only notice a few of these bugs, swab the alcohol and give the stalks a thorough massage. That ought to be their care. However, you must apply neem oil if the infestation is beyond control. You may need to treat the palm of your pests with insecticide in extreme circumstances.
The palms are susceptible to infections with fungi, such as sooty fashion and viral diseases, such as rust. Most of these disorders are spinal cord and spider mites transmitted.
Final Thought
Although Bamboo Palm (Reed Palm aka Cane Palm) is by no means harmful, their fruits are full with oxalate – an extremely hazardous substance. The fruit can lead to tiredness, stomach pain, diarrhoea, and vomiting when consumed. Both human and animal life is at risk therefore asking anyone who consumes its fruits for emergency medical care.
You may just clip the fruit off before they completely unfold and disposed of in a secure way to prevent any problem. Another technique is to stop the blooms from pollinating and producing fruit.