One of the legendary palms of the Southeast US, is a plant known simply as Sabal ‘Birmingham’. It’s origin is the stuff of legends, and like a good legend, grows better with the passage of time. What we know is that the palm first came to the knowledge of the public in 1976, when a Miss Alexander of Birmingham, who had grown it from seed and cultivated it for 40 years, passed away, and the palm was donated to the Birmingham Botanic Garden. Miss Alexander had grown her plant from seed purchased from California, so the historical trail runs cold there.
What was unusual about the Miss Alexander’s palm, is that it was dramatically larger than the Southeast US native Sabal minor and developed an above ground trunk with age, compared to the subterranean trunked Sabal minor. At the time of its demise, it had developed a 10′ tall trunk, which represented 50-60 years of growth. Back in the 1970s, the Southeast US was much colder than it is today, so finding a large growing trunked palm in a cold zone 7 garden, was much rarer than it is today. While the smaller Sabal minor was rock hardy in Birmingham, the hardiest tree sabal, Sabal palmetto, was not hardy. It is now widely assumed by experts in the hardy palm world, that this represents a hybrid of the two Southeast US natives, Sabal minor and Sabal palmetto.
The transplanted Alexander palm grew at the Birmingham Botanical Garden until the 1980s, before, mourning the loss of its longtime owner, it passed away. In the interim, native plant guru, Bob McCartney of SC’s Woodlanders Nursery, thankfully took an interest in the palm, and began growing it from seed collected at the Birmingham Botanical Garden. Without his foresight, the palm would have become a horticultural bigfoot, known only from out-of-focus, shadowy photos and rumors from conspiracy theorists.
We’ve been growing Sabal ‘Birmingham’ at JLBG since 1996, from seed collected by local botanist, Jesse Perry, from a Raleigh city park, who purchased one of the early Woodlanders plants. That plant is probably the largest living specimen. It takes decades for a plant to become large enough to produce fruit, and we are just beginning to get a few seed from our own 7′ tall x 10′ wide plants. We hope to have the first crop ready in just over a year, which will mark fifteen years, since we last had plants to share.
Thanks for sharing! How does the growth rate and appearance compare to Sabal Brazoriensis (a natural hybrid of similar Sabal species)?
Please keep posting about the hardy palm collection!
We have both Sabal x brazoriensis and Sabal ‘Birmingham’ growing nearby, that are both 25+ years old. Both plants now have about 2′ of above ground trunk. Our Sabal x brazoriensis is much more dense in habit, with a much thicker trunk. The leaves have far less filaments than S. ‘Birmingham’. Our S. ‘Birmingham’ has a much more open plant habit.