The Florida State Tree

Family: ARECACEAE the palm family

The palmetto, cabbage palm, or sabal palmetto is the state tree for both South Carolina and Florida. It is native to the Bahamas, Cuba, Florida and grows as far north as Virginia. Its habitat includes mesic temperate to tropical hammocks are often dominated by oaks but may have significant component of Sabal palmetto and occur from the panhandle down into the middle of the Florida peninsula. Here we let pictures do the talking for our fabulous state tree....

Palmetto or Sabal palmetto

A typical v-shaped Sabal palmetto leaf.

A Palmetto also graces the cover of a popular book about Florida trees by Gil Nelson.

Description: Straight trunked palm to 18 m in height Flowers: During June and July, abundant, small (.5cm), fragrant, white flowers are born on drooping branched panicles. Fruit: Round and black born in drooping clusters. Leaves:Fan shaped 1-2 meters long, deeply divided and V shaped, shiny green above and gray-green below. 

Similar to: Other palms, but the V shaped fan like leaves are pretty distinctive.

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A clickable map of the larger palmetto palms on FSU grounds in Tallahassee.

American Elm - hanging on in America.

Family: Ulmaceae or the elm family which includes elms, sugarberries and hackberries

Ulmus americana

American Elm - American Elm
There are five species of elm growing wild in Florida. American elm is not the most common species on campus but it is widespread in Florida. The American elm is more or less susceptible to numerous diseases, including the Dutch elm disease (originally from Asia but first described in Holland) which was unintentionally introduced to the United States in the 1930s and killed millions of trees throught out the country - completely altering the ecology of its native range the eastern US . Disease resistant genetically modified varieties were bred and engineered and put on the market in the 1990s. It is the state tree for Massachusetts and for North Dakota. According to the Flora of North America Native American tribes used it for medicinal purposes, including coughs and colds, sore eyes, dysentary, diarrhea, broken bones, gonorrhea, and pulmonary hemorrhage, as a gynecological aid, as a bath for appendicitis, and as a wash for gunwounds. The most common elm species on campus is is the introduced ornamental Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia which has become naturalized in at least two counties in Florida and has self-sown seedlings coming up near plantings on campus.

 Description: Medium to large deciduous tree up to 40 m tall.Flowers: Small clustered in drooping catkins. Fruit: A flattened samara. Leaves:2-15cm long and 1-10 cm wide alternate, simple , two ranked, oval in shape. Margins doubly serrate, bases are not symmetrical - they are unequal either side of the mid-vein. Point tips. More important details: Bark light brown to gray, deeply fissured or split into plates. Wood soft. Branches pendulous, old-growth branches smooth, not winged; twigs brown, pubescent to glabrous. Trunk base is often supported by buttressed roots

Similar to: Similar to slippery elm (Ulmus rubra) but differs because the upper surfaces of the leaves are smoother, only slightly rough. Buds are chestnut brown, nearly glabrous, and pointed rather than purplish-brown, redhaired and blunt as is the case in its slippery cousin.

Ulmus americana has samaras (a type of winged seed).

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Map of American Elm on FSU grounds in Tallahassee

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