Adventitious

Tall cabbage palms (Sabal palmetto) form a canopy along the St. Sebastian River at the South Prong Slough where we visited on 5/15/2022. Long ago these palms shed their boots (bases of old leafstems), as all cabbage palms do as they age. Note the horizontal striations left behind on the trunks left behind by the departed leafstems.

Some of these stately cabbage palms has adventitious roots, roots that form from non-root tissue in response to wounds, nutritional deprivation, and, in this case, flooding. Moist conditions have favored the growth of mosses on the adventitious roots at the South Prong Slough.

Some of the cabbage palms in the mesic hammock area at the beginning of the Herb Kale Nature Trail at the Oslo Riverfront Conservation Area (ORCA) also sport adventitious roots, as shown below …

Less moss but whisk fern (Psilotum nudum), a very primitive epiphyte, grows from the adventitious roots on this palm at ORCA.

Cabbage palm fern (Phlebodium aureum) is the most common epiphyte found on cabbage palms, usually growing in old leafbases. As cabbage palms mature and the leafbases are lost, the cabbage palm ferns lose their “footing”. Pictured below is a young and fresh frond of cabbage palm fern on a young booted cabbage palm at the South Prong Slough …