Some palms are planted in avenues by the hundred. Borassus is not one of them. A mature Borassus flabellifer, the palmyra palm, is a landmark in its own right: a massive columnar trunk, a dense crown of stiff fan leaves, and a silhouette that reads from hundreds of metres away. Across South and Southeast Asia the palmyra is one of the most familiar of all palms, a working tree of field edges and coastlines, and in a landscape scheme it brings age, mass and presence in a single specimen.
Why multi trunk specimens are rare
Borassus does not clump or sucker. Each seed produces a single palm with a single growing point, and the normal outcome of decades of growth is one straight trunk. Specimens with two or even three trunks rising from one base are rare finds, and that is exactly what makes them prized as feature material: a double or triple trunk Borassus delivers the sculptural weight of a grove in the footprint of a single tree.
Reading the label: double trunk and double planted
The nursery rows distinguish two things a buyer should understand. A true double trunk is one individual carrying two trunks from a shared base. A double planted specimen is two palms raised together in a single root ball so their trunks mature as a pair. Both make striking features, and the label tells you exactly what you are specifying. The photographs below show both forms as graded stock, each specimen numbered and measured against a levelling staff.
Prepared for export
A feature palm is only feature material if it arrives alive and intact. The specimens photographed here are established in large ring containers so the root system is dense and transportable, supported with bamboo staking, and graded by measured height. Ahead of despatch, preparation follows the discipline documented across our export records: the root ball is wrapped to hold moisture, the crown is drawn in, tied and wrapped to protect the fronds through handling, and out of gauge specimens are planned into open top containers or shipped as deck cargo rather than forced into a standard box.
Specifying a Borassus
Single trunk palmyras suit gateways, roundabouts and long axial views. A double trunk earns a courtyard or an arrival plaza to itself, and a triple trunk is a one of one centrepiece for the project that gets to it first. Browse the current listing on our Borassus flabellifer product page, or contact us to talk through the availability of multi trunk specimens.