Editorial

Tobias W. Spanner, Tizianstr. 44, 80638 München, Germany

Chamaerops Magazine rarer than the Dodo? Well, I hope not quite. I have picked up some hope again with a recent surge in contributions. I guess springtime after a mild winter, at least in Western Europe, has inspired many to sharpen their pencils and put down a few notes.

In this issue, Paul Rose talks about how he learned palm-gardening the hard way in a hilarious piece. Ed Croft has been to South Africa and gives us a tour through The Company’s gardens. Howard Janes’ Palmetum in Majorca sees nice progress, and Jörg Witticke gets back at your editor for insulting some Ficus in a recent issue. Nigel Kembrey introduces us to a new, mouth-watering Trachycarpus that was recently found in a remote corner of India, and Robert Lackner gives us a few more clues on his favourite subject, Nannorrhops ritchiana. Finally, to make up for the lack of a “letters page” in the last issue, we have a really big one here with many interesting questions, answers and remarks.
From issue number 50 onwards I would like to introduce a new idea put forward by our tireless Tony King to produce special issues on particular subjects, such as general cultivation issues, particular palm species or genera or palms and other exotics from specific countries or regions.

For issue number 50 (what a nice anniversary), I would like to propose “Growing Palms from Seed”, a good back-to-basics subject that hasn’t been featured much in recent issues. If you have collected or bought any palm seeds recently and grown seedlings from them, please write your experiences up for the EPS, discussing how you cleaned them, what sowing method you used, the temperature that worked for you, how long they took to come up, if you had any problems etc. Of particular interest would also be if you had success with species that have a reputation of being hard to sprout, or an unorthodox method you used successfully (or not). We can use anything from just a few lines to many pages. Please e-mail me at mail@palmsociety.org or send your material to

The European Palm Society
"Chamaerops"
c/o Tobias W. Spanner
Tizianstrasse 44
80638 Muenchen, Germany

Please send in your material as soon as possible so we can get Chamaerops out in a timely fashion.

Of course any others articles on any plant related subject of your choice are always welcome. If you have any suggestions for what you would like to see published in the next special issue, please let me know.

On a different topic, something that amazed me recently was a conifer in a snowy land. Who ever would have thought that! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen as much snow as when I recently travelled to California. While most people are prompted to think of palms, deserts, vineyards and foggy coastlines, the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada receive a white capping every winter that causes some roads to be blocked almost into summer. And in those lofty heights grow the world’s largest living organisms: The Giant Redwoods, Sequoiadendron giganteum, which reach dimensions that put every Jubaea to shame. The oldest and largest of these trees are nearly 3000 years of age and 100 m tall. The largest of them all, the General Sherman Tree, has a volume of nearly 1500 cubic meters and its trunk weighs an estimated 1250 metric tons. A perfect plant if you want your garden to take over the entire neighbourhood. T.S.