# Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal palmetto)

> The native tree palm of the Southeast coast, evergreen and salt-hardy, with fragrant summer flowers for bees and black fruit for wildlife.

Also called cabbage palm, sabal palm, Carolina palmetto. Category: Uncommon Yard Trees. Grown from seed by Blue Whale Trees. Web version: https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/cabbage-palmetto/

![Cabbage palmetto (Sabal palmetto) three tall palms with round crowns of fan-shaped fronds against a blue sky](https://bluewhaletrees.com/img/plants/cabbage-palmetto-h1610-800.jpg)
*Photo: Mmcknight4, Public domain · [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASpalmetto2.JPG)*

## Facts

- Type: Medium tree
- Mature height: 30 to 60 ft
- USDA hardiness zones: 7 to 10
- Grows wild in: The coast, floodplain forests, swamps and wet flats
- Native range: [Florida](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=FL), [Georgia](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=GA), [North Carolina](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NC) and [South Carolina](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=SC). Also recorded, not native, in [Alabama](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=AL), [Louisiana](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=LA), [Mississippi](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MS) and [Texas](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=TX)
- Sun: Full, Part
- Soil moisture: Average, Wet, Dry
- Growth rate: Slow
- Flowers: June to August
- Fruit: Berries, October to January
- First crop: —
- Mature spread: 15 ft
- Traits: Salt tolerant, Evergreen, Honey tree, Wildlife value, Street tree, Tolerates wet soil, Drought tolerant
- Sold as: Saplings, Seed

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

## Availability

Saplings ship [in a pot](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/a-sapling-in-a-pot/index.html.md), [usually 12 to 18 inches tall](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/small-sapling-or-big-transplant/index.html.md), in the dormant season, and their [height and age](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/reading-a-nursery-listing/index.html.md) are stated with the price, once available. Live plants ship February to May. Not priced yet: leave an email on the web page for one email when it is priced, with a code for 10% off the plants in that order, not shipping or tax, or write to captain@bluewhaletrees.com.

## Notes

Cabbage palmetto is the most northerly and most common native tree palm of the United States, and the state tree of Florida and South Carolina. It takes its name from its edible bud, but cutting the bud kills the palm. Its fragrant summer flowers yield a strong, dark honey, and its fruit feeds a long list of wildlife. It stands up to salt wind and is rated the most wind-resistant tree of south Florida. North Carolina lists it as threatened, at the northern edge of its range. It is often planted as a street tree. Group a few as a grove, where the big fronds rustle in every breeze.

## Size, growth and what to expect

Cabbage palmetto grows slowly, and slower than the foot a year our growth estimator uses for a slow tree. Seedlings in the wild can take 15 to 30 years to show a trunk, though nursery care shortens that, and a young trunk may then rise up to 6 inches a year. It makes a palm 30 to 60 feet tall with a round crown 10 to 15 feet wide, and it can live more than 100 years.

Arching, branched stalks 3 to 8 feet long carry thousands of small, fragrant, creamy white flowers from June into August, and they draw a great many bees. Black fruits about a third of an inch across ripen in fall and hang on into winter. Birds, raccoons, squirrels, deer, black bears and wild turkeys eat them.

It grows wild along the coast from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to the Florida Keys, through most of peninsular Florida and in the Bahamas and Cuba. Its home is coastal hammocks, dunes, salt marsh edges, river floodplains and flatwoods. It also grows west along the Gulf Coast to Texas, and planted palms grow more than 100 miles north and inland of its native range.

## How to grow Cabbage Palmetto

Cabbage palmetto grows best in full sun and takes part shade. A young palm stands shade, but a grown one needs sun most of the day. It is not fussy about soil and grows on sand, marl or limestone. Once rooted, it takes both drought and flooding. It stands salt spray on its fronds but not salt water around its roots. Plant it 15 feet from a wall, and set trees 10 feet apart. Keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship potted. Nurseries move grown palms dug from pastures, but a young palm without a trunk cannot regrow cut roots, so it moves only with its root ball whole. Plant it in late spring or summer, when warm soil speeds new roots, in a hole about twice as wide as the pot. Set the base of the stem at the depth it grew in the pot, since planting deeper can kill a palm. Put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stem. Clean the pulp off the seed, keep it from drying, and sow it fresh, half an inch to an inch deep. In warm, moist soil it can sprout in as little as 18 days. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 30 days first.

Water weekly through the first two summers. Feed it a slow-release palm fertilizer, since a shortage of potassium spots and kills the oldest fronds. Leave the green fronds on, since cutting them stunts the palm, and remove only fronds that are fully brown. Never wound the trunk, which cannot heal.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Bees carry its pollen, and flies, beetles and wasps visit too. Lethal bronzing, a disease spread by a planthopper, can kill it, and an infected palm cannot be cured. The disease has turned up in more than 30 Florida counties. Ganoderma butt rot and other trunk rots can also kill it, and the palmetto weevil attacks stressed, newly moved palms.

## Sources

- [USDA Forest Service, Silvics of North America, vol. 2: Sabal palmetto, cabbage palmetto, Wade and Langdon](https://research.fs.usda.gov/silvics/cabbage-palmetto)
- [USDA Forest Service, Woody Plant Seed Manual (2008), Sabal chapter, Olson, Barnes and Karrfalt](https://www.fs.usda.gov/nsl/Wpsm/Sabal.pdf)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, ENH-733/ST575: Sabal palmetto, Sabal or Cabbage Palm, T. K. Broschat](https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/ST575)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, CIR1047/EP001: Transplanting Palms in the Landscape, Broschat](https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP001)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, ENH1279/EP543: Regenerated Sabal/Cabbage Palms (Sabal palmetto): Why and How](https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP543)
- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, Franklin County: Fatal Palm Disease Discovered in Franklin County, 2022](https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/franklinco/2022/05/23/fatal-palm-disease-discovered-in-franklin-county)
- [NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox: Sabal palmetto](https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/sabal-palmetto/)
- [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center: Sabal palmetto](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=SAPA)
- [Flora of North America, vol. 22: Sabal palmetto, Zona](http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200027118)
- [Florida Native Plant Society: Sabal palmetto](https://www.fnps.org/plant/sabal-palmetto)
- [USDA NRCS Plant Guide: Cabbage palmetto, Sabal palmetto](http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_sapa.pdf)
- [NatureServe Explorer: Sabal palmetto](https://explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.149842/Sabal_palmetto)
- [North Carolina Natural Heritage Program: List of Rare Plant Species of North Carolina 2024, revised 11/03/2025](https://www.ncnhp.org/media/833/open)
- [USDA NRCS PLANTS Database: Sabal palmetto](https://plants.usda.gov/plant-profile/SAPA)

## Read before planting

- [Ten planting mistakes that quietly kill trees](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/ten-planting-mistakes/index.html.md)
- [Transplanting young trees: timing, water and protection](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/transplanting-young-trees/index.html.md)
- [Protecting young trees from voles, rabbits, deer and squirrels](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/protecting-trees-from-animals/index.html.md)
- [Multistem or single stem? Sometimes the trunk is hiding the answer](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/multistem-or-single-stem/index.html.md)
- [What a young tree looks like: first-year seedlings of oak, walnut, hickory, chestnut, maple and redbud, and the weed trees to pull](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/what-a-young-tree-looks-like/index.html.md)
- [Leaf litter, not wood chips, under the canopy](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/leaf-litter-not-wood-chips/index.html.md)

## Related

- Other palmettos (Sabal) we grow: [Dwarf Palmetto](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/dwarf-palmetto/index.html.md)
- Under its canopy: [Needle Palm](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/needle-palm/index.html.md), [Dwarf Palmetto](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/dwarf-palmetto/index.html.md) and [Walter's Viburnum](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/walter-viburnum/index.html.md)
- [Planting-site check](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md): for a thrive, struggle or fail verdict on Cabbage Palmetto, add ?species=cabbage-palmetto with zone (2 to 10), sun (full, part, shade) and moisture (dry, average, wet) to that address; for example, the verdict for zone 7, part sun and average soil as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto&zone=7&sun=part&moisture=average
- [Companion species for Cabbage Palmetto](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/companions/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto): the natives that share its ground and the plants that pair with it in a yard.
- [Transplant planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/transplant/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto): whether Cabbage Palmetto can be moved and what the move takes, the root ball, its weight, who can move it and the months, as Markdown at that address (add caliper= or height=, month= 1 to 12 and soil= sandy, loam or clay)
- [Tree growth estimator](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md): how the height and trunk projections are made; the estimate for Cabbage Palmetto as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto (add height=, years= and site= poor, average or good)
- [Seed sowing planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md): how Cabbage Palmetto is sown, in the chart for every species (treatment, cold days, depth, timing); the dated plan for it as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto (add state= and zone= for your own frost dates, method=fridge for the refrigerator route)
- [Pollination planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md): what Cabbage Palmetto needs for a crop and how many to plant, in the table for every species; the verdict for 1 of them as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md?plants=cabbage-palmetto:1
- [Planting-window tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md): when to plant Cabbage Palmetto where you live, as a fall and a spring window from the local frost dates; the windows as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto&state=MO&zone=6 with your own state and zone in place of those
- [Planting-distance tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md): how far Cabbage Palmetto goes from a house, a septic field, a walk, wires, a property line and the next tree; the distances as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md?species=cabbage-palmetto&near=house,septic,pavement,wires,boundary,tree
- [Bloom and fruit calendar](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md): the months Cabbage Palmetto flowers and fruits, in the grid for every species; its own row and the gaps of a planting with it as Markdown at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md?plants=cabbage-palmetto