Bring Tropical Vibes in Your Space with These 17 Dwarf Palm Varieties

An exotic palm tree with its fronds high into the sky on a sunny beach is a holiday postcard picture… But you can have the same effect on a smaller scale, with dwarf and small varieties. This way, you won’t need a big garden to have a corner of the tropics outside your window; and you won’t have your neighbors complaining that its fronds take out the light on their yard…

In fact, tall palms and cycads are a beauty to behold, but they need lots of space and especially headroom, and we can’t all afford that. But fortunately, there are many of these trees that never grow really tall… Dwarf varieties are those that never grow to more than 10 feet (3.0 meters), semi dwarf will reach 15 feet into the air (4.5 meters) and we can call them small if they stay under 20 feet (6.0 meters). And you can also grow some of these in containers!

But what these compact palm trees lack in size, they make up in personality. And we have chosen the most decorative varieties you can have in your garden, to have a little corner of sunny paradise outside your door.

These small and dwarf palm trees come from all over the world, and the first on our list is a popular variety from North America. Shall we start?

1. Saw Palmetto (Serenoa repens)

We can start with a little classic, saw palmetto, or Serenoa repens, native to the southeastern United States, especially coastal regions of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. In fact, its name, “palmetto”, means “small palm”, and it is true to its reputation, because it never grows to more than 10 feet tall (3.0 meters) and it does it very slowly as well. However, this dwarf variety is not all tiny!

Its evergreen fan shaped fronds, glossy and waxy, can be 3 feet across (90 cm), and they are sculpturally segmented into 10 to 30 blade like leaflets, for a super exotic and lush effect! At the tips of the sturdy petioles that hold the foliage have spines on them, and that’s why it is called “saw”: because it can cut you…

The dense green mesh it forms can be silver white, blue greenish or emerald green, and it has a very florid appearance, like you would expect in a rainforest, but in late spring to mid summer, it will add a very fragrant floral display with lots of very fragrant cream like flowers that open on upright plume like inflorescences.

These blooms, will attract lots of pollinators, especially bees, and the honey from these blossoms is very hight quality indeed. After this, you will see small and juicy berries develop, first yellowish in color, and then black when they ripen and little mammals and bird love to feed on them!

Saw palmetto is a dwarf tree but with great beauty and with lots of assets for gardening. Great for wildlife, it also tolerates harsh growing conditions, like deep shade, waterlogged soil (for a short period) and salt. For this reason, it will work well in almost all gardens where winters are warm, also for foundation planting and against soil erosion!

• Hardiness: USDA zones 8 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun, partial shade and full shade.
• Flowering season: late spring to mid summer.
• Size: 5 to 10 feet tall (1.5 to 3.0 meters) and 4 to 10 feet in spread (1.2 to 3.0 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile to lean, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought and salt tolerant, and it tolerates seasonal water-logging.

2. Sago Palm (Cycas revulsa)

Sago palm is a dwarf tree from a very ancient family. In fact, botanically it is not a “real palm”, but a cycad, or a member of the Cycadales family, which appeared on this planet 280 to 300 million years ago! And that’s before the dinosaurs, and in fact, it will give you a full Jurassic landscape! Its bright emerald green, shiny and evergreen fronds are pinnate, and they form a lovely rosette at the top, like in a prehistoric forest.

But while the actual tree will never grow to more than 10 feet (3.0 meters), the leaves can be 2 to 6 feet long (60 to 150 cm)! The many leaflets are really thin and long, and they curl at the tips, creating a feather like effect, wile the mid rib can be yellowish in color. Its bloom time is very long indeed, from early summer to mid fall, and they are spectacular…

Female specimens will produce conical inflorescence, like a cone, up to 20 inches long (50 cm), yellowish in color, while males will develop a round fluffy cluster ( 28 inches across, or 70 cm), of a pale beige to cream tonality! Then, only the females will give you tight clusters of red fruits as well. All this will happen atop an upright trunk of an orangish brown shade, with a fibrous and soft looking surface.

Sago palm can live up to 100 years, and it is a winner of the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society. It will add a wonderfully exotic touch to any informal garden as an accent tree or for foundation planting.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: early summer to mid fall.
• Size: 3 to 10 feet tall and in spread (90 cm to 3.0 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid loam based soil with pH from mildly acidic to neutral. It is drought tolerant.

3. Lady Palm (Rhapis excelsa)

A popular houseplant, also for its diminutive size, compact lady palm can also be a great garden variety, suitable for small spaces, because it never grows any taller than 15 feet (4.5 meters). It only grows about 6 inches a year (15 cm), so, it will take time even to reach those heights. Winner of the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society, this native species to China and Vietnam will give you the full impression of living in an Asian forest, because it looks a bit like bamboo.

This is because it has upright and slender, smooth canes that bear the foliage. However, when the plant is young, these are covered in brown fibers, which drop as it ages. And the fronds are fan shaped, with 5 to 10 long, pointed and softly arching leaflets. The evergreen leaves are about 20 inches across (50 cm), and of a bright emerald green color.

While it will not usually blossom indoors, it will outdoors, in summer, with small panicles of little yellow flowers, yellowish or pinkish in shade, and forming radiating spikes… These are then followed by equally tiny fruits, that start off bluish green and then progress to warmer shades of pale yellow and brown.

You can grow lady palm as a specimen, or better in groups, and it is excellent for a lush and tropical touch also in hedges and tall borders, in foundation planting and against walls, and it will also suit an oriental style garden, even in full shade.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: partial shade and full shade.
• Flowering season: summer.
• Size: 6 to 15 feet tall and in spread (1.8 to 4.5 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid to dry loam based soil with pH from mildly acidic to neutral. It is drought tolerant.

4. Giant Dioon (Dioon spinulosum)

Don’t let the name of this palm confuse you: giant dioon will never grow more than 8 feet tall (1.8 meters). One of the oldest plants on the planet, this cycad native to Mexico has been with us for 170 million years! But why is it called so? Maybe because the evergreen pinnate fronds are all but small! In fact, they reach 15 feet long (4.5 meters) in your garden, and they arch beautifully from its top, like elegant feathers.

Their beauty is almost architectural, thanks to the 120 to 240 (!!!) long, narrow, almost needle like leaflets that each leaf has, which are perfectly spaced along the mid rib with with geometric precision… These are bluish green in color, and they form a very exotic and showy rosette. But this spectacle is overshadowed when the cones that rise then bed from the middle, which, in female specimen, can reach 30 inches in length (75 cm) and 20 pounds in weight (30 kg)!

These are brown to gray in shade and they can appear at any time of the year, depending on your region. The trunk is very fibrous and brown, from pale to dark. When the tree is young, it forms a bulbous shape, then, it slowly turns into an upright and conicals shape.

Slow growing and really sculptural, giant dioon can be an outstanding specimen tree in an exotic looking garden; or it could make your swimming pool look like the set of a film shot in the tropics.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: any time of the year.
• Size: 12 to 15 feet tall and in spread (3.6 to 4.5 meters); it can grow taller in its native habitat (up to 30 feet, or 30 meters) but it is very slow growing.
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, very well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought tolerant.

5. Bottle Palm (Hyphorbe lagenicaulis)

We move now to the Indian Ocean, more precisely to the Mauritius Islands, east of Madagascar, where the fauna is really unusual and spectacular, with another small cycad: bottle palm. It only grows to a maximum of 15 feet (4.5 meters), but no visitor to your garden will ever fail to notice it… In fact, its name is very descriptive… Let’s start from the bottom, this time… You will see a lovely trunk that bulges slightly, almost white in color and with very decorative horizontal lines on it.

Then, all of a sudden, it narrows like a bottle neck, and the stripes disappear, giving you a very smooth, almost marble like pale gray or brownish surface! At the top, you will find an open rosette of only 4 to 8 fronds, that arch beautifully. These evergreen, broad and pinnate leaves can reach 6 feet in length, and they are divided into long, pointed and thin segments, up to 140 of them, and they range in color, from bright to mid green, and taking on golden tonalities when they age.

Under this leafy spectacle, this tree will produce a crown of creamy white flowers in the summer season on pendulous racemes. And of course, they will become little round fruits that ripen to brown.

The originality of bottle palm makes it an ideal small tree to lift up a dull garden as a specimen plant; it can suit exotic styled spaces, but also Mediterranean and oriental ones, and it looks really stunning on a sunny open field, or a lawn, where you can fully enjoy the shape and beauty of its trunk.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 10 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun.
• Flowering season: summer.
• Size: 12 to 15 feet tall (3.6 to 4.5 mets) and 6 to 8 feet in spread (1.8 to 2.4 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay, chalk or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought tolerant.

6. Jelly Palm (Butia capitata)

It is now the turn of a South American species that grows to only 20 feet tall maximum (6.0 meters), but sometimes half as much: jelly palm. Its fronds arch very deeply, almost trying to get back to the ground, and they reach 6 feet in length (1.8 meters), but the central ones rise up towards the sky, then, as they age, they bend down.

These evergreen pinnate leaves have between 25 and 60 long and blade like leaflets, which, by contrast, point up, forming a decorative V shape… Add the silver blue or blue green coloring and you get a full picture of how attractive it is… Or maybe not, because the trunk, with its diamond shaped woody remnants of the foliage is also quite sculptural.

Then again, in summer it will add yet another display: lots of cream yellow flowers will appear on long spikes that look like tails, and they will fill your nostrils with their fruity fragrance. And this is no mistake, because they will turn into juicy fruits, orange yellow in shade, which are really delicious, super rich in Vitamin A, and harvested in its native countries for jellies, marmalades, ice creams and liquors!

You can also extract the oil from the nuts, but apart from this, you can grow jelly palm for its great decorative value and small size as a specimen or grouped with other varieties in a warm but even modest garden, and you will have a winner of the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society in your collection!

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: summer.
• Size: 10 to 20 feet tall (3.0 to 6.0 meters) and 10 to 4.5 feet in spread (3.0 to 4.5 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought tolerant.

7. Pygmy Date Palm (Phoenix roebelenii)

This time, our dwarf tree’s name is not misleading… In fact, native to China, Laos and southern Vietnam pygmy date palm can only grow to 10 feet tall (3.0 meters) to the very maximum, and sometimes it only reaches 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). The crown at the top is particularly dense, with lots of elegantly arching fronds with a feathery texture, which can extend to 3 feet long (90 cm).

Evergreen, the leaves are pinnate, with many soft looking and bending thin and long leaflets, that wave dreamily in the wind… They are of a glossy mid green color, giving you a sense of freshness, despite its exotic look. Underneath this leafy umbrella, you can have one, or sometimes more trunks, embossed with the diamond shaped and woody remnants of the dropped foliage. Spring will see it blossom, with large, but soft looking and drooping clusters, like plumes, of cream colored little flowers.

Look closely, and you will see that each bloom has three pointed and fleshy petals, and pale brown anthers inside. This floral show is also accompanied by a long elliptical bract that partly shades it… The female specimens will then produce many elongated fruits, that ripen to a deep ruby brown color, and they are also edible, very sweet, and delicious!

Ideal for containers thanks to its small size, winner of the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society will bring an exotic but refreshing and light presence to your garden if you plant it as a specimen or also in small groups.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: spring.
• Size: 6 to 10 feet tall (1.8 to 3.0 meters) and 6 to 8 feet in spread (1.8 to 2.4 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid loam, clay, chalk or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline.

8. Coontie (Zamia pumila)

Look down, and you will see a super dwarf palm variety, coontie! In fact, you may confuse this cycad for a perennial, because it only grows to a very diminutive 3 feet tall (90 cm)! It is also called Florida arrowroot, because it is native to this peninsula, as well as to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico… And it is really charming.

The fronds can be 3 feet long (90 cm), but they tend to spread rather than rise up, with an almost prostrate habit… And they are really peculiar… evergreen, of a glossy and rich emerald green color, the leaves are pinnate, but the many ovate and oblong leaflets bend upwards, like combs, or like many hands rising to they sky in prayer… It is a dioecious species, with male and female plants.

The male specimens produce cones that are cylindrical, about 2 to 7 inch long (5.0 to 12.5 cm), ripening to an intense reddish brown color, while those of females are like pineapples, deeply cracked, with amazing and luminous color contrast (from almost white in the cracks to almost black on the scales) and they open to reveal bright orange seeds if fertilized after they bloom in spring. The reproductive structures of both sexes come from the top of the very short trunk, which is globular, like a woody bulb just above the soil.

Ideal for containers and a much loved houseplant, coontie is a super small palm variety that can easily dir into borders and even flower beds, or you could also use it for foundation planting and as ground cover if you mass plant it.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 8 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: spring.
• Size: 2 to 3 feet tall (60 to 90 cm) and 3 to 4 feet in spread (90 to 120 cm).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid to dry loam or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought tolerant.

9. European Fan Palm (Chamaerops humilis)

Let’s now move to a region that has given so much to gardening, the Mediterranean, to meet one of its small palm varieties, called European fan palm… This winner of the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society grows to 15 feet tall (4.5 meters) and it ends, at the top, in a very lush and dense crown of fan shaped fronds, each up to 2 feet across (60 cm) and with 10 to 20 stiff, narrow, pointed and blade like segments.

This artistic foliage also has an intriguing color ranging from bright green to bluish, via aquamarine… But the decorative and evergreen foliage held by spiny petioles of this species is only one of its assets. In fact, in spring it will produce very dense upright panicles, conical in shape and packed with loads of bright yellow flowers at the summit of this compact tree… And these will then turn into clusters of inedible but very attractive shiny fruits that ripen to orange, cherry to ruby and then plum in color.

The trunk or stem can be single or multiple (up to 8) and it is covered in a fibrous brown down, like a coat, but you can still see the woody remnants of the petioles emerging from it.

European fan palm can be a very exotic centerpiece in a well kept garden, grown as a specimen plant, also in a container, and it is ideal for a coastal or Mediterranean garden, but suitable to other styles as well. It will look lovely on a lawn, where you can fully admire its extraordinary beauty.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: spring.
• Size: 6 to 15 feet tall (1.8 to 4.5 meters) and 6 to 20 feet in spread (1.8 to 6.0 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, but poor soil tolerant, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to neutral. It is drought and salt tolerant.

10. Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal minor)

Of course, dwarf palmetto is very small indeed, and it only grows to a maximum of 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). Native to many southeastern States, it makes up for its reduced height with the size of its fronds… It won’t produce many at its top, only 4 to 10, but each can be a whopping 3 feet across (90 cm)!

They are fan shaped and evergreen, with long and stiff, blade like segments that are deeply divided but they may still join partly at the base, near the petiole. The foliage is also very smooth in texture, glossy and deep green to bluish in color. In late spring, it will produce big multi branched clusters of cream white blossoms, which can even touch the ground, especially in young specimens.

The flowers are really super fragrant, and they continue into early summer, when they start giving way to lots of round berries that start off bright green and then ripen to almost black, and they look a bit like grapes, and they are actually edible, as are the young roots, that can be baked into bread. This species is also a popular houseplant, but it will not bloom indoors, only outdoors.

Excellent as a foundation plant, and also to underplant trees, dwarf palmetto looks its best in little clumps, where it can bring an exotic leafy and floral display to your green space at eye level, giving you the perfect rain forest underbrush effect. Being fairly cold hardy and salt tolerant, it will also suit coastal gardens in temperate regions.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 7 to 10.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: late spring to early summer.
• Size: 4 to 6 feet tall and in spread (1.2 to 1.8 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: moderately fertile, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is drought and salt tolerant.

11. Needle Palm (Rhapidophyllum hystix)

Here is another super dwarf variety for your garden, and possibly the hardiest of all… Needle palm comes from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina and it too has become a popular houseplant. Its popularity may be due to the fact that the fan shaped fronds, with 5 to 12 rigid but gently arching segments, pointed and thin (like needles) and very regularly parted are of an exceptionally lustrous and very glossy dark green color.

Maybe it’s the size of the evergreen leaves, up to 3 feet across (90 cm) that has made us love it? Or maybe because the foliage forms a very dense clump like in the underbrush of a tropical rainforest? One thing though, if you grow it indoors it is very unlikely to bloom, while outdoors it will.

But you will need to look for the flowers in the summer months under the leafy clump, where you will see very dense clusters of yellow brown flowers, which will then transform into equally packed groups of hairy fruits, very fuzzy and ripening to a chestnut tonality.

One of the most adaptable dwarf varieties of these exotic trees, needle palm is ideal to add texture to gardens, even in deep shade and in forests or wooded areas, where you can grow it as a shrub, but also as a hedge, a specimen or for foundation planting, and even in containers, it is quite a treat!

• Hardiness: USDA zones 6 to 10.
• Light exposure: full Sun, partial shade and full shade.
• Flowering season: summer.
• Size: 3 to 6 feet tall (90 cm to 1.8 meters) and 4 to 6 feet in spread (1.2 to 1.8 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay, chalk or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It is both drought and wet soil tolerant.

12. Dwarf Sugar Palm (Arenga engleri)

Growing to a maximum of 12 feet tall (3.6 meters) dwarf sugar palm is a lovely species from Taiwan, and it will bring all the exotic beauty of that country to your garden, even if it is small. It will produce a very leafy, dense and lush mound of elegantly arching pinnate fronds, glossy and evergreen, like a tropical shrub… Up to 7 feet long (2.1 meters) have long and thin segments that wave in the breeze, about 100 of them each, soft and feather looking, and glossy bright green, though they turn golden when at the tips as they age.

May, June and July will see it blossom with pendulous multi stemmed spikes of honey colored blossoms, which hang with a deep light under the leaves, but only outdoors… And then, this floral display will give way to large and round fruits, that ripen to amazing shades of yellow, orange and cherry red. While they look appetizing, they are not edible and they can cause you very bad reactions if ingested. \

It is usually multi trunked, and at the base you will see short cane like stems, sometimes covered by a loose woody bark, which later peels off to reveal the bamboo like surface underneath.

Ideal as a specimen plant, dwarf sugar palm will suit any exotic looking or even oriental style garden, where it will need a sunny spot to give its best display. It is also suitable for foundation and definitely for containers as well.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9b to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun.
• Flowering season: late spring to mid summer.
• Size: 8 to 12 feet tall (1.8 to 3.6 meters) and 12 to 15 feet in spread (3.6 to 4.5 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained and medium humid loam or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to neutral.

13. Parlor Palm (Chamaedorea elegans)

It is called parlor palm because this species native to Guatemala and Mexico has found its way into private living rooms and offices as a favorite and very widespread houseplant. But you can also grow it outdoors, and this small variety will grow to a very maximum of 16 feet tall (about 5.0 meters) but it usually stays much shorter… Its botanical name tells you the main trait of this tiny tree: it is very elegant indeed!

In fact, the fronds are not particularly big, only about 1 foot long, but their soft and be ding segments, long and thin with a pointed tip are quite spaced, giving this leafy show a very airy, open appearance. Evergreen, rich emerald green and very glossy, these leaves also arch decoratively on long and smooth petioles.

If you have already grown it indoors, you will know that blossoms are rare, but outdoors, where it will bloom in spring, with multi stemmed spikes of small and golden yellow flowers, like many sparks of light… Then, as the little spikes turn orange, the round fruits arise, and they mature to shiny blue to black! The trunks, or stems can be single or more usually multiple, and they are cane like, a bit like in bamboo.

Underrated as an outdoor tree, parlor palm actually gives its best in warm gardens, where you can have it as an elegant and exotic companion, in containers, for foundation planting or in groups. It will suit tropical, Mediterranean, oriental styles, but also urban and more traditional ones.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 10 to 12.
• Light exposure: partial shade.
• Flowering season: spring.
• Size: 6 to 16 feet tall (1.8 to 4.8 meters) and 3 to 6 feet in spread (90 cm to 1.8 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained and medium humid loam, clay or sand based soil withH from mildly acidic to neutral. It is moderately drought tolerant.

14. Chinese Windmill Palm (Trachycarpus fortunei)

Of course, Chinese windmill palm comes from China, and it has a big personality to bring to your garden! But, despite this, it is quite small, actually dwarf, never growing to more than 10 feet tall (3.0 meters). And at that height, you will see its amazing fan shaped fronds, that sometimes get to an almost fully round shape (hence the name), up to 3 feet wide (90 cm), and held by long, strong petioles.

The show is spectacular, like a dance with oriental fans… The rich green color of the many long and pointed segments adds to the effect, but old ones turn yellow starting at the tips before falling. But you will never be left without foliage, as it is evergreen… When summer comes, it will produce large pendulous clusters of bright and vibrant golden flowers, that look like honeycombs, and descend from under the leafy crown.

In female specimens, these then turn into lots of dark blue fruits that really look like grapes, but they are not edible… Under all this an upright trunk covered in warm brown to gray fibers competes the spectacle which has earned this variety the coveted Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society!

The ideal place for Chinese windmill palm is center stage in your small or large garden, as a specimen tree. Next to a swimming pool, at the end of a lawn as focal point, or also next to your main door, it will bring an exotic and sunny personality to any green space, and it is even suitable for formal designs. What is more, it is also fairly cold hardy and wind tolerant!

• Hardiness: USDA zones 7 to 10.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: summer.
• Size: 8 to 10 feet tall (2.4 to 30 meters) and 4 to 6 feet in spread (1.2 to 1.8 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained and medium humid to dry loam, clay, chalk or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline. It os salt and drought tolerant.

15. Spindle Palm (Hyphorbie verschaffeltii)

Let’s now meet a small sized beauty that super exotic Madagascar has to offer you: spindle palm! This compact tree grows to a maximum 20 feet tall, or 6.0 meters, so it is just about at the upper end of our limit, but it is still classed as small, and it is slow growing, and it may even stay shorter. What is more, it is really worth having!

To start with, its evergreen fronds are literally colossal, reaching up to 10 feet (3.0 meters) in length! But what is more, they a have a sublime elegance… Pinnate and going up and then arching with the style of a ballet dancer, they have many clearly spaced segments of leaflets, which are long and thin… However, these point up, at an angle of about 45^o, forming a sculptural V shape.

Their bright emerald color and glossy surface adds luminosity to this jaw dropping display, while the foliage also has an open and airy look. Coming in elegant rosettes of a few leaves at the top, they rise above waterfalls of yellow blooms in drooping spikes that emerge in winter and continue into early spring! Then, olive like and shiny fruits will follow, and they will ripen to plum and then dark blue shades, but they are not edible… But even the trunk is spectacular.

When it is young, it is very smooth, almost marble like, and it will keep so at the top, where it also stays bluish to greenish. But the lower part will develop stripes of brown and cream, or white and sometime even blue as the plant ages!

Spindle palm is a really spectacular and elegant tree that needs to have a very prominent place in your garden. It has the phisque du rôle of a superstar, and it will anyway steal the show. Excellent in lawns and poolsides, it can also mark your main door with a sculptural and jaw dropping spectacle.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 10 to 12.
• Light exposure: full Sun.
• Flowering season: winter and early spring.
• Size: 15 to 20 feet tall (4.5 to 6.0 meters) and 10 to 16 feet in spread (3.0 to 4.8 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained and medium humid loam or sand based soil with pH from mildly acidic to neutral. It is moderately drought tolerant.

16. Loulu (Pritchardia munroi)

Loulu (actually, lo’ulu) does not have a common name in English, but it does in the language of its native country, Hawaii! And we could not leave out a small species from these sunny, warm and happy islands, of course! Growing to about 15 feet tall maximum (4.5 meters), though rarely a foot more, it has all the personality of its land of origin.

In fact, them many and dense evergreen fronds that come from the top look like ‘ku’u po’o: the traditional Hawaiian skirt! Yes, because they droop down from above, pointing downwards, and they are fan shaped, with many segments, but these are not stiff, but rather loose and even unkempt! And you will get between 15 and 20 of them for each compact tree… In mid and late summer, soft golden to honey yellow dense clusters of flowers will descend from under the crown, and they look like dangling corncobs.

The fruits that follow are edible when raw, and they are actually considered a delicacy. But leave some on, because they ripen to really dark, virtually black and very shiny spheres, like big black pearls, in fact! The upright trunk is quite unusual for a palm, as it is deep brown, with horizontal furrows while at the top it becomes fibrous.

Loulu is a really great choice for an exotic garden, where you can grow it as a specimen or in a rainforest inspired wood or group of trees. However, you can also grow it also in other landscaping styles, and it will definitely become a point of conversation with your guests and visitors.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9 to 11.
• Light exposure: partial shade.
• Flowering season: mid and late summer.
• Size: 12 to 15 feet tall (3.6 to 4.5 meters) and 6 to 8 feet in spread (1.8 to 2.4 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: average fertile, well drained and medium humid loam or clay based soil with pH from mildly acidic to mildly alkaline.

17. Majesty Palm (Ravenae hilderbrandtii)

And we conclude with royalty: compact majesty palm comes from the Comoro Islands, east of Madagascar and in the Indian Ocean, and it strives to reach 10 feet tall (3.0 meters), which makes it a proper dwarf variety! But its evergreen fronds are all but small, reaching 6 feet in length (1.8 meters) and with petioles between 12 and 18 inches long (30 to 40 cm).

They are pinnate, and with many segments or leaflets, but these are long, spaced and gently arching, giving the leaf a broad and airy look. They look a bit like ostrich feathers, forming a fluffy rosette at the top with their bright and glossy emerald green. And you will get 12 to 25 in each crown.

Its flowering season is still unclear, because it is often grown as a houseplant and it won’t blossom indoors, but it does in the open air, with little multi stemmed spikes of candid snow white little blooms, but this is actually rare… Nor do we know much about its fruits, apart from the fact that they are single seeded. But what you may get are the bare mid ribs of old leaves that bend downward and hang from above like lianas… Finally, the trunk is smooth, upright and slender, gray in shade but it may bulge at the base when it is young.

Majesty palm outdoors is a bit of a collector’s item, more common in botanical gardens than private ones, but if you love small and dwarf palm varieties, you may want to add it to your collection, and it will definitely give your green space the extra factor.

• Hardiness: USDA zones 9b to 11.
• Light exposure: full Sun and partial shade.
• Flowering season: uncertain.
• Size: 6 to 10 feet tall (1.8 to 3.0 meters) and 6 to 8 feet in spread (1.8 to 2.4 meters).
• Soil and water requirements: fertile and organically rich, well drained loam based soil with moderately acidic to neutral pH.

Compact, Dwarf and Small Palm Trees from All Over the World – and Coming to Your Garden

We have traveled all over the whole wide world to find these varieties of compact palm trees, but, despite their minute dimensions, they all have a very big and very exotic personality, ready to turn your garden into a tropical paradise!