Saw Palmetto

Size, growth and what to expect

Saw palmetto grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator, and faster with more water and food. It makes a clump 3 to 8 feet tall and 4 to 6 feet wide, sometimes 10, and its creeping stems keep spreading. Each stiff fan runs about 3 feet across. Fire burns off the leaves, but new ones push out within days. Its stems can live past 100 years, and some wild clones may be thousands of years old.

Plumes of small, fragrant, creamy white flowers open from March to July. The berries turn from green through orange to bluish black in September and October, each about an inch long. Black bears, deer, raccoons and many birds eat them, and the palmetto skipper's caterpillars feed on the leaves.

It grows wild on the coastal plain from southern South Carolina through Georgia and Florida to Alabama, Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana. Its home is pine flatwoods, scrub, dunes and hammocks, often in vast stands. NatureServe ranks it critically imperiled in Louisiana, at the west end of its range.

How to grow Saw Palmetto

Saw palmetto is a low, creeping palm for full sun or part shade, and its leaves color best in sun. It takes any soil from dry sand to ground that floods now and then, and once rooted it rides out long droughts. It takes salty wind and some salt spray, but not salt water. Its leaves burn readily, so where wildfires run, keep it away from the house. Set plants 6 feet apart and keep them 5 feet from a wall and back from paths, since the leaf stalks carry sharp teeth. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the base of the plant at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Clean the pulp off the seed, since seed left in the fruit seldom sprouts. Soak dried seed in warm water for five to seven days before sowing. Sow it half an inch to an inch deep once nights stay above 70 degrees, and seedlings come up over two to three months.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in long droughts. Young plants take two to six years to settle in, and grass and weeds crowd them, so keep a mulched circle around each one. Leave room for it to spread, since its creeping stems keep branching.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. More than 300 kinds of insects visit the flowers, most of them bees and flies. Flowering and fruiting vary from year to year, and some years bring little fruit. It is remarkably free of pests, though anthracnose, a fungus, can make young fruit drop.