Links - Discussion boards

Based on an article in Chamaerops 46 by Oscar Salden, Beegden, The Netherlands

Some of the most valuable kinds of sites on the world wide web concerning palms and other exotic plants are definitely message boards or discussion groups. Message boards are mostly used with two goals, a) Exchange experiences/knowledge and b) Exchange plants/seeds

Exchange experiences
Palms often need very specific care. A good way to expand your knowledge and experiences about palms is to visit message boards. Not only can you read very specific information, but you also have the opportunity to ask questions that have not been answered by your palm books.
First, I will discuss a number of boards I think you definitely should visit as a Chamaerops member. Then, I will present an additional list of boards, followed by relevant Gardenweb and Yahoo boards.

Note 1: In the upcoming list are some non-English boards. Don't feel restricted because of another language. People on these boards are extremely dedicated to palms and would be glad to answer your questions in English.

Note 2: Most boards are public which means you can read and add messages without the requirement of a membership. Some boards are private which means you can only read and/or write messages if you are a member.

Message boards for Chamaerops readers

Below is a list of message boards that are extremely useful for Chamaerops members. These boards discuss only palm topics or are aimed at a corresponding or similar geographical location as Europe. All of these boards have many new interesting topics daily and a vast group of experienced and dedicated members.

European Palm Society Messageboard (private)
A message board that is exclusively available for the members of this website. It speaks for itself that messages on this board are exactly discussing what we are interested in: palm trees!

Exoten (private)
A Dutch message board. This message board is by far the best board for Dutch speaking palm enthusiasts. The members of this board are extremely dedicated to exotics, organizing exotic plant travel and group buyings. Although palms are often the object of discussion there is a general interest in all exotic plants.

Exoten und Garten (public)
A message board in German. This board is very popular among the German speaking exotic gardeners. Most of the information is about cold hardy exotics making it a very useful board for Chamaerops members.

Forum le site des Fous de Palmiers (public)
For the French speaking part of our palm gardeners there is the Fous de palmiers forum. It has frequent and high quality posts.

Hardy Palm & Subtropical Board (public)
Many new topics appear daily on this US-based board. More than half of the messages are about palms, and are often about hardy palms.

International Palm Society Message Board (public)
One of the most popular palm message boards on the web. Discussions on this board are almost completely focussed on hardy and non-hardy palm trees. This board has members from all over the world and is not focused on one geographic location like many other boards.

UK Oasis (private)
Another heavy traffic message board. Messages on this board are not specifically dedicated to palms, but include all kind of exotic plants. The board is very useful because it is aimed at the UK, which has a climate resembling the climate in which many Chamaerops members live.

Other message boards

The number of message boards has increased a lot over the years. I cannot review all boards, but a few are worth mentioning:

Central Florida Palm and Cycad Bulletin Board TOC (public)

Coudforest Café (public)

Gulf Breeze Garden BBS (public)

Hardy Palms and More for the Northeast (public)

Hardy Palms In Temperate Zones Board (public)

Palm Centre Forum (public)

Palmen in der Schweiz (public)

Palme Per Paket forum (public)

Palm Tree Paradise Message Board (public)

CCInfo Pflanzen Pinnwand (public)

Southeastern Palm & Exotic Plant Society Bulletin Board (public)

Tropical Attitudes Gardening Message Board (public)

Gardenweb

Gardenweb (www.gardenweb.com) is a very large site about gardening. This site has many forums about plants. I have listed the ones that discuss palms. If you are interested in palms from a certain region you should visit a "region" forum.

Palms and Cycads (private)

Tropical Plants (private)

Tropicalesque Gardens (private)

Xeriscaping & Southwestern Gardening (private)

Yahoo Groups

There are more yahoo groups focussing on palm topics than the ones listed below. However, some of them have a very small number of members. Therefore, I will only mention the large groups. If you are interested in smaller relevant yahoo groups, please visit the yahoo forum site (groups.yahoo.com) and do a search on "palms".

Nzpalmcycad (private)

Palms (private)

Palmsociety (private)

Exchange Plants
Although most message boards are mainly focused on exchanging experiences about palms, there are some boards that are completely focused on exchanging plants.

Plant exchange (private)

Seed exchange (private)

CCInfo Pflanzen Tauschbörse (public)

Tauschbörse für winterharte Exoten (public)

Others

Tropical Attitudes Gardening Message Board
Tropical Attitudes, US based tropical plant message board. (Lee Mullen)

Europalms
Europalms, email discussion group on palms. (Lee Mullen)

Hardy Palm & Subtropical Board
Hardy Palm and Subtropical board. Popular US chat forum. (Lee Mullen)

Click here to suggest a Site.

Nonworking links
Unfortunately, www addresses sometimes change and it is very well possible that some of the listed links will not be accessible in the future. This doesn't mean that the message boards have gone, however. Often they have moved to another address. There are several ways of finding them.
First, you can try to enter the first part of the address. For example http://www.palms.com instead of http://www.palms.org/palmtalk
Then you need to take a good look at the site and chances are fairly large you will find the new link to the message board. A second way to find a lost link is to do a search in a powerful search engine like Google