I did find this discussion on another forum that shows some mature specimens here in Seattle, but it’s unclear how much they might be protected during bad freezes:
This doesn’t likely help you but I grew a Pygmy date palm for a few years and it thrived. I finally cut it at the base because of how thorny it was, and I had finished my palm kick haha. It says 9b and I never provided any protection for it. But the moment that 3 inch spine went about an inch into me I said it had to go
Sorry, my point is palms are way hardier than you think. A palmetto may grow super slow there and could die when young when hit with 14* however I’m sure they will survive for the most part. Especially if you grow it in the understory how they usually grow it should be fine
I spent a good chunk of my childhood in rural north FL, and have a similar hatred of the saw palmetto, I might even still have scars on my ankles from accidentally running through some in the woods. The dwarf palmetto does not have the same toothed stems on the fronds, as far as I know.
Here’s a great breakdown of the different “palmetto” species from my alma mater:
Some relevant excerpts:
The “palmetto” moniker has since been applied in common names to the following Florida palm species in two different genera:
Serenoa repens = saw palmetto or simply “palmetto,” the most frequent modern application of the name
Sabal palmetto = cabbage palmetto or palmetto tree
Sabal etonia = scrub palmetto, bush palmetto
Sabal minor = swamp palmetto, dwarf palmetto
Sabal miamiensis = Miami palmetto (rare or extinct)
And a confirmation of the toothlessness:
Sabal palms can be separated from all other genera of fan palms by three key characteristics:
costapalmate fronds or leaves,
unarmed petioles (smooth, no thorns or spines anywhere on the palm), and
The guys over at Juniper Level Botanic Garden/Plant Delights Nursery just south of Raleigh have worked a fair bit with hardy palms. Here’s what they say about Sabal minor:
Some subterranean-trunked sabal palms can be grown as far north as Zone 6 which includes northern Oklahoma, Kentucky, southern Pennsylvania, and coastal Massachusetts. Sabal palm trees prefer warm summers and will not survive well in cool summer climates such as in the Pacific Northwest (try trachycarpus instead).
What they say about Trachycarpus
Windmill palms [Trachycarpus] are one of the few cold hardy palms that love cool Pacific Northwest climates as well as the summers of the mid-South.
Funny enough, they don’t sell Sabal minor. They do sell some really rare Sabals though.
They do have needle palm, which they claim is the most cold hardy palm of all.
The hardiest of palms, Rhapidophyllum hystrix is a slow-growing Southeast US (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina) native that has withstood -9 degrees F here with NO damage (without protection or special siting). We expect established needle palm specimens should handle -20 degrees F.
I see those all the time here, there’s a really tall one on my block. A very popular Seattle-area palm. I was hoping for more of an understory/creeping palmetto for along my alleyway, not a tall palm.
The PalmTalk thread in my first post includes a few people in the PNW who said they were surprised at how well various Sabal species have done here. The main problem they report is our dry summers, they need to be watered here in summer. There was even one photo of someone’s Sabal collection right here in West Seattle, so I’m going to try to track that one down and knock on their door.
