queen anne is dying

And I bet you Stuart fans were positive that her body had been resting in Westminster Abbey for just over three centuries.

That Queen Anne is truly and certainly dead.

I am talking about the Queen Anne (two of them actually) that hangs out in my patio. It has many aliases. Queen Anne palm. Queen palm. Cocos palm. To avoid confusion with identity, let's call it by its formal name: Syagrus romanzoffiana. We played this name game before -- three years ago (bring on the guillotine).

Both of the palms in the patio are ill. I noticed the fronds are developing bright yellow spots. Lemon yellow.

That set off alarm bells. There is a bacterial infection that is fatal to palms. Lethal yellowing disease. It is not a very fancy name. But it is straight-forward. Fronds yellow. Plant dies.

Hoping I was wrong, I fell back on my One True Brain -- Google. Because the Queen Anne palm is a popular palm for landscaping, there is a lot of information available. Some might even be accurate.

The first news was reassuring. The Queen Anne palm is one of the species not highly susceptible to lethal yellowing disease. It is resistant. "Resistant" is the waffle-word used by experts. Mind you, it is not "immune." Just "resistant."

So the it-is-going-to-die tomorrow option tumbled down my list of worries. But something is causing the fronds to yellow, if not the yellow peril. That list now includes four options. Maybe.

The first is a manganese deficiency. Just like people, palms need a nice dose of heavy metal to stay healthy.

And the solution is easy. All I would need to do is spray the new foliage with a manganese spray.

Of course, the easy answer usually responds to the wrong question, as we learn from all politicians daily. A manganese deficiency can be diagnosed when new fronds are deformed or have a bronze or yellow tinge. I suspect my heliconia (the flowers that do a great bird-of-paradise impression) are suffering from a manganese deficiency, but not the Queen Anne palms.

The second suspect is the long list of creepy-crawlies that love tropical plants. Pests -- in the jargon of the initiates.

Topping that list is the palm leaf skeletonizer. That Mattel-invoking word is another of those highly-descriptive names. The caterpillar is a voracious eater. It will chomp away on a palm frond until nothing is left but the veins. What is left is a mere skeleton. Northerners know that look from tent caterpillar infestations.

But that is not the problem with my fronds. They appear to be quite healthy -- other than that pesky yellow spotting.  I examined the fronds and could see no insect or caterpillar activity.

However, the fronds are not completely free from suspicious activity. I cut off a portion of frond to take to the local nursery. And this is what I found underneath. The nurseryman did not think the caterpillar morphing in its chrysalis could be the cause of the yellow spots.

Suspect number three is the dog that didn't bark. Yellow spots may mean nothing at all. All palm fronds die. But my fronds have been dying from old age in the past without spotting up. Or maybe I did not notice it. The nurseryman did not think the spots were the normal cycle of death.

That brings us to suspect number four -- the culprit in the nurseryman's sights. An iron deficiency.

I am not so certain. My other sources indicate palms with an iron deficiency usually start yellowing or browning at the tips of the new fronds, not in the middle. And it usually strikes container-grown palms, rather than those planted directly in garden soil, as mine are.

There are two recommended solutions. First, replant the palm. That is not going to happen. These are full-grown palms that are now taller than the second story of the house.

The other solution is far easier. Fertilize with a chelated iron fertilizer.
The nurseryman does not speak English, and I do not know a lot of technical terms for growing plants. "Chelated" is an example. I know what it means in English. But I was baffled at what the word is in Spanish. My SpanishDict application was not helpful.

Apparently, I was successful enough to let him know I wanted some iron for the palms. He informed me an iron application was not necessary. Instead, I needed two machetes.

I thought he was going to tell me to chop off the offending fronds. I was wrong.

I needed the machetes to tie one to each tree with red string. He repeated it must be red string. Within three months, my palm fronds would be completely green.

Now, I have been the victim of Boy Scout snipe hunts, and I tend to be skeptical of anything that seems to lack  the semblance of scientific support (water in zip-lock bags stapled to patio supports to chase flies away is just one example). The best I could imagine is that the iron in the machete is supposed to transfer to the palm through its trunk.

The machete approach to healthier trees is not new to me. I have a restaurateur friend who has a large piece of property filled with fruit trees. He is constantly fighting off one pest or another.

His gardener had recommended three separate uses of machetes to cure tree problems. The tie-a-red-ribbon-and-machete-to-the-old-broke-tree was the first one I had heard. A second was sticking the machete in the ground near the trunk of a tree to cure whatever ailed it. (I suspect the iron-transfer theory must be at work there. But I really have no scientific explanation.)

My favorite was the third recommendation. One of the mango trees was not producing fruit. So the gardener took the broad edge of the machete and repeatedly whacked the trunk of the tree. When my friend asked what he was doing: "The gardener said the tree was like a disobedient child and needed to be beaten until it obeyed."

We northerners may laugh at each of these home remedies. But here is the bottom line. My friend always laughs when he finishes the story. All three times, the trees performed better.

Now, I do not know how scientific any of those tales are. But I have lived long enough to know that most of the important events in our lives leave the goddess of science mute.

I am going to look for some iron and manganese. If that does not work, I may be in the market for a spool of red string and two new machetes.