Age Estimation
This palm grows slowly and is highly resilient to fire. Some individual offshoots, or ramets, are believed to be more than 500 years old according to Abrahamson (1995), while some entire plants, or genets, are estimated to be over 5,000 years old as per Takahashi et al. (2011).
Given the growth of Saw Palmetto ramets at 0.5 cm per year, estimating the age of a saw palmetto in the wild becomes a matter of basic mathematics.
If you have a saw palmetto with a measurable stem or trunk:
- Measure the Trunk: Take a measurement of the height of the trunk from the ground to where the fronds begin.
- Calculate the Age: Divide the height of the trunk (in cm) by 0.5 to get an estimate of the age in years.
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For example, if a saw palmetto has a trunk that’s around 20 inches, or 50 centimeters, tall:
50 cm ÷ 0.5 cm/year = 100 years
This would mean that Saw Palmetto’s trunk is approximately 100 years old.
Let’s consider an example from Johnny’s conservation land, where one Saw Palmetto trunk was measured at 11 feet in length.
First, let’s convert the 11 feet to centimeters.
1 foot = 30.48 cm
So, 11 feet = 11 x 30.48 cm = 335.28 cm
Given the growth rate for a saw palmetto in the wild:
335.28 cm ÷ 0.5 cm/year = 670.56 years
So, a wild saw palmetto with a trunk that’s 11 feet long would be approximately 670.56 years old, which can be rounded to approximately 671 years based on the given growth rate.
The roots of the Saw Palmetto grow at a pace much slower than its trunk. As a result, the roots might be up to ten times older than the plant’s eldest trunk.
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