Palm Society of South Texas (PSST)

Welcome to the Volk's in San Antonio

(Please note: Placing the cursor over a picture gives you some info on it....)

This month the society went up north to San Antonio to visit the Volk's and their 'hardy-semi-tropical' garden. John is growing a variety of hardy and semi-hardy palms in his garden. A list of his palms is below to demonstrate the varieties that can be grown this far north in Texas. John's garden is about 12 years old, however, many of his palms have only been in the ground for 10 or less of those years. Many of the varieties were garnered through mail order and originally arrived as 1-2 leaf seedlings. Thusly, it's taken some of those palms some time to gain any size. Some of the palms have grown extremely fast, like the phoenix hybrid (sylvestris X theophrastii) pictured below which has only been in the ground 7 years. Others have taken a long time to grow like his livistona australis. John took everyone on a tour of the yard, detailing the hardiness of the various palms in the yard. He also spoke on his over coming the beetle attacks.

A phoenix hybrid (picture by Ed Ladd

Eventually, the tour ended and we all sat down to a wonderful meal that Yong Volk had put together. Between the BBQ chicken and sausage and all the side dishes and desserts, everyone had plenty to eat. After the meal we had a quick society meeting and covered some of the recent issues discussed at southern meetings for those local members that haven't been able to make southern meetings. We discussed the Brownsville Botanical Garden project as well as treasury report. We also covered the remaining meetings for this year and those for next year. At this time, we only have one month left open for 2007 and already have some members lining up meetings 2008.

JV talks about his phoenix and answers Sarah's question (Picture by Don Nelson)

Talking palms with the members (Picture by Don Nelson)

members looking on while JV discusses his palms (Picture by Don Nelson)

Tour continues (Picture by Don Nelson)

Members viewing the garden

Blake stands back as the old man talks palms

Wally and Johnny take a break after the meal

John Dillard taks a seat after the society meeting

After the society meeting, members continued to socialize and enjoyed the unusually cool afternoon. As members left the meeting they were given a sabal uresana seedling that John had grown from seed. Additionally, John cut branch segments from his branching cereus cactus for those that wanted. We look forward to seeing you all in the valley next month.

sabal, butia, sage and a tiny phx sylvestris palm (picture by Ed Ladd)

Silver med palm (cerifera)

a hardy tropical view (picture by Don Nelson)

Jubaea X Butia palm

Jv's palms: butia capitata, yatay brahea armata, edulis chamaerops humilis, cerifera dypsis decipiens hybrids butia x jubaea, butia x syagrus, butia x parajubaea jubaea chilensis livistona australis, chinensis, decipiens, saribus nannorrhops ritchiana phoenix canariensis, dactylifera, sylvestris, sylvestri X theophrastii rhapis excelsa sabal burmudana, mexicana, minor, palmetto, riverside, uresana syagrus romanzoffiana trachycarpus fortunei, martianus trithrinax campestris washingtonia robusta, filifera

giving away the baby sabal uresana palms

John, Yong and 'Lucky' the dog... (picture by Ed Ladd)

Palm Society of South Texas (PSST)

9 Sep 2006

Meeting summary by John Volk. Photos by John Volk unless otherwise stated.

Back to the PSST Home Page