Palms & Cycads

Home Study Course -Palm Plants, Cycad Plants; Identification and Use

Palms are a very important group of plants, primarily throughout the tropics, but also extending into cooler areas. There are some palms which will even grow very well in temperate climates. There are palms growing successfully in cooler places throughout the world, including Tasmania, England, Canada and Cape Cod in the USA. Many palms however are not particularly hardy to the cold, and will be injured by temperatures approaching freezing point. In temperate climates, palms are also often grown as indoor plants.

Lesson Structure

There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
   • Scope and Nature of Palm Culture
   • Plant Naming
   • Species, Cultivars, Varieties
   • Characteristcs of Palm and Cycad Families
   • Botanical Characteristics
   • Review of Australian Cycad Genera
   • Australian Palm Genera
   • Review of Palms
   • Sub families, tribes and genera of palms\
   • Resources
2. Culture
   • Cultivating Cycads
   • Understanding Soils, Nutrition, pH, etc
   • Soil Mixes for Palms and Cycads
   • Mulches
   • Fertilisers
   • Drainage
   • Planting
   • Water Management
   • Pruning Palms and Cycads
3. Propagation
   • Overview
   • Propagating Palms from Seed
   • Propagating Media
   • Other Propagation Methods (for some palms); eg. Offshoots, layering)
   • Transplanting Seedlings
   • Cycad Propagation; seed, offsets, suckers
   • Transplanting cycads
   • Managing pest and disease
   • Propagating Equipment
4. Selecting Suitable Palms and Cycads
   • Growth Habits; solitary, clumping, aerial branching, subterranean branching, climbing
   • Leaf Types; palmate, pinnate, bipinnate, fan
   • Review of palm genera
   • Cycad genera
   • Cold tolerant palms and cycads
5. Pests and Diseases of Palms and Cycads
   • Scope and Nature of Pest Management
   • Use of Chemical Legislation
   • Common palm and cycad pests
   • Common palm and cycad diseases
6. Using Palms and Cycads
   • Growing palms in a greenhouse
   • What palms can be grown in a greenhouse or conservatory
   • Environmental management and plant needs
   • Temperature, Ventilation, Light Management
   • Landscaping with Palms
   • How palms can be used for different affects
   • Planting Design
   • Preparing a Plan
7. Commercial Applications For Palms & Cycads
   • Scope and Nature of Uses for Palms
   • Rattan
   • Palm Oil
   • Dates
   • Coconut
   • Coir Fibre
   • Palms as Indoor Plants
   • Species Suited to Indoor Plant Culture
8. Special Assignment

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Distinguish between the characteristics of different types of palms and cycads.
• Determine general cultural practices, including propagation, for growing palms and cycads.
• Choose palms and cycads to suit different climatic situations.
• Determine treatments for palms and cycads suffering various health problems.
• Specify appropriate landscape applications for palms and cycads.
• Explain different commercial applications for palms and cycads.

When deciding what palm or cycad to use in a particular situation, you should consider:

• what the environmental conditions will be where you wish to grow the palm
• what level of care it is likely to get
• what soil (or potting media) conditions it is likely to contend with
• size and shape of the species
• growth habit
• leaf type

Growth Habit
There are five types of growth habit, as follows:

1. Solitary - these produce one single trunk with only one growth tip at the top. If that growth tip dies, the palm dies (which doesn’t happen as much with other types). This type looks clean, growth does not get out of hand, and it includes a large range of species; all of which go to make solitary palms common choices for use in landscaping or for other decorative purposes.
2. Clumping - these produce multiple stems or trunks from the one root system (Suckers grow at or below ground level). Some produce lots of suckers, others only a few. Many can be propagated by division.
3. Aerial Branching - normally this only occurs naturally in the genera Hyphaene, Dypsis, Korthalsia and Laccosperm. It can occasionally and abnormally be induced though in some solitary palms by tissue being damaged.
4. Subterranean (under ground) Branching -this is known to occur in Nypa fruticans and Salacca zalacca. These can be propagated by separation.
5. Climbing - around 15 palm genera contain species that climb, however few are of great significance with the notable exception of Calamus. This genus is in fact the largest palm genus (with well over 300 species), and the commercial source for rattan which is used to make “cane” furniture.

SUGGESTED READING

Why Choose This Course

• Unique course materials (developed by our staff) and more current than some colleges (many reviewed annually); as a result, ACS graduates can be more up to date.
• We work hard to help you understand and remember it, develop an ability to apply it in the real world, and build networks with others who work in this field (It’s more than just serving up a collection of information –if all you want is information, buy a book; but if you want an education, that takes learning to a whole new level).
• Start whenever you want, study at your own pace, study anywhere
• Don’t waste time and money traveling classes
• We provide more choices–courses are written to allow you more options to focus on parts of the subject that are of more interest to you; a huge range of elective subjects are offered that don’t exist elsewhere.
• Tutors are accessible (more than elsewhere) – academics work in both the UK and Australia, 5 days a week, 16 hours a day. Answering emails and phone calls from students are top priority.
• We treat students as individuals –don’t get lost in a crowd. Our tutors communicate with you one to one.
• Extra help at no extra cost if needed. When you find something you cannot do, we help you through it or will provide another option.
• Support after you finish a course –We can advise about getting work, starting  business, writing a CV, etc. We can promote students and their businesses through our extensive profile on the internet. Graduates who ask will be helped.
• Support from a team of a dozen professional horticulturists, living in different parts of the UK, and in both temperate and tropical climate zones of Australia.

About ACS

ACS was started in 1979 by John Mason, who at the time was a gardening author, horticultural consultant and lecturer in horticulture at several colleges across Melbourne (in Australia).  Over the summer that year John discovered that there were thousands of applicants going to be turned away from horticulture courses at Burnley Horticultural College (now Melbourne University). There were simply too few courses being offered for the number of people wanting to study horticulture in Australia. This situation prompted a move to establish a correspondence course at Burnley; but after months of unsuccessful lobbying for support from government; John wrote a course, and with help from a colleague at Council of Adult Education, marketed it.

Standards were originally set in line with what were seen to be the standards of Australia's top horticultural college; and over the years, those standards have never been reduced. This makes our courses longer and more demanding than some other colleges; but it has also led to us building a credibility that stands tall in the horticulture industry across the world. 

In the early 1990's John started visiting the UK and becoming involved with the horticulture industry there. Around the mid 1990's ACS began offering RHS courses, and in 2003, John was formally recognised for his contribution to British Horticulture by being made a fellow of the Institute of Horticulture. ACS, as a school, established an office and staff in the UK in 2001, and has expanded considerably since then. Today it is formally affiliated with five other colleges in the UK (including Warwickshire College); all of who license and deliver ACS courses. 

A team of leading horticulturists work for the school's horticulture department, including 12 faculty members in both the UK and Australia

How You Study

• As soon as you enroll, we send an email to explain it all.
• We direct you to a short orientation video (downloadable over the internet) to watch, where our principal introduces you to how the course works, and how you can access all sorts of support services
• You are either given a code to access your course online, or sent out a CD or course materials through the mail (or by courier).
• Work through lessons one by one, each lesson typically having four parts:
• An aim -which tells you what you should be achieving in the lesson
• Reading -notes written and regularly revised by our academic staff
• Set Task(s) -These are practicals, research or other experiential learning tasks that strengthen and add to what you have been reading
• Assignment -By answering questions, submitting them to a tutor, then getting feedback from the tutor, you confirm that you are on the right track, but more than that, you are guided to consider what you have been studying in different ways, broadening your perspective and reinforcing what you are learning about
• Other - Your work in a course rarely stops at just the above four parts. Different courses and different students will need further learning experiences. Your set task or assignment may lead to other things, interacting with tutors or people in industry, reviewing additional reference materials or something else. We treat every student as an individual and supplement their learning needs as the occasion requires.
• We provide access to and encourage you to use a range of supplementary services including an online student room, including online library; student bookshop, newsletters, social media etc.
• We provide a "student manual", that is a quick solution to most problems that might occur

Recognition

• ACS has a highly respected international profile: by employers and academics alike. People are more aware of us than many other distance education schools –just do a search for “horticulture distance education courses” and see what comes up on the internet; or search for ACS Distance education on Facebook or Linked in, and see how many connections we have compared to other colleges.
• Recognised by International Accreditation and Recognition Council
• ACS has been educating people around the world since 1979
• Over 100,000 have now studied ACS courses, across more than 150 countries
• Formal affiliations with colleges in five countries
• A faculty of over 40 internationally renowned academics –books written by our staff used by universities and colleges around the world.

Extra Books or Reference Materials

• The course provides you with everything that you need to complete it successfully.
• Assignments may ask you to look for extra information (eg. by contacting nurseries, visiting gardens or searching the internet), but our school's resources and tutors are always available as a back up. If you hit a "roadblock", we can quickly send you additional information or provide expert advice over the phone or email; to keep you moving in your studies.
• Some students choose to buy additional references, to take their learning beyond what is essential for the course. If a student wants to buy books, we operate an online bookshop offering ebooks written by staff at the school. Student discounts are available if you are studying with us. The range of e books available is being expanded rapidly, with at least one new ebook being written and published by our staff every month. See www.acsebook.com