By Jaskiran Kapoor From The Indian Express

A favourite with the hospitality industry, luxury hotels and resorts and airports, the Royal Palm tree has the potential to lend an expensive facelift to any landscape. If watered well and planted in sunny areas, these aristocratic trees can shoot straight up to 100 feet, the sheath of their leaves wrapped around the topmost part of a concrete trunk.

With a bottle-like figure of the trunk, its shades of grey showing of the rings of age and a burst of green like an umbrella on the top, the Royal Palm (also known as Mountain Glory and Palmiste) is a headturner. Cubans worship it and use it while observing Palm Sundays, while Florida embraces it as a major attraction.

However, Chandigarh gets it from the West Indies (the Caribbean), and you can spot it at Panjab University, Uttar Marg towards Lake, Sector 1 and Rock Garden. It adorns the sidewalk of several homes and looks statuesque as the perfect rich looking avenue tree.

From the Arecaceae family with the botanical name of Roystonea regia (Kunth) Cook, the Tree Directory of Chandigarh defines this tree as graceful.

Though the Palm Tree thrives in tropical, warm areas, it can grow equally well in other moderate climates, provided they get sunlight and well drained soil. Quite non-fussy in maintenance, these trees are figure conscious, their trunk refraining from increasing a swollen bulge after adulthood.

Unlike the coconut palm trees that are leaning towers of Pisa, Royal Palms grows straight and their crownshaft green canopy of leaves look marvelous. It is all the year round and these heavyweight leaves make for excellent thatch roofs, while birds and bats love to visit them.

For more on this story go to: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/royal-palm-a-headturner/

EDITOR: Compare image above with Grand Cayman’s Royal Palms on the West Bay Road – Seven Mile Beach.