The sabal palm
Two centuries, one mystery solved
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The sabal palm stood in the Garden for 200 years and was cared for by generations of Horticulturists before reaching the end of its life in 2021. Even then, it had one more secret to reveal - its true identity.
An uncertain arrival
No one knows exactly when the palm arrived at the Garden. Estimates place it sometime between 1810 and the early 1820s, based on records left by 19th-century Horticulturists and a matching herbarium specimen - but no acquisition record has ever been found. It most likely arrived from Germany as cargo through Leith, then moved with the Garden to its Inverleith site in the early 1820s, beginning a life spent almost entirely under glass.
Over the following 50 years, the palm was moved four times as the Palm Houses were built and rebuilt around it - including a move in 1858 that required shifting a rootball estimated at 7–8 tonnes. It was finally planted directly into the ground in the early 1900s, after nearly a century spent in a tub.
A case of mistaken identity
For as long as anyone could remember, the palm was labelled Sabal bermudana. That changed in 2021, when RBGE botanists documenting the tree ahead of its removal examined the 15 known species of Sabal and identified a different match: Sabal mexicana - a species not formally described by science until 1838. That means when this palm arrived in Scotland, it belonged to a species that didn't yet have a name.
Full certainty would need DNA sequencing or a flowering of its young progeny, decades from now - but the evidence is strong enough that the Garden's records, and the labels on its offspring, now read Sabal mexicana.
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Securing its legacy
Rather than simply losing the Garden's oldest resident, the team used the moment to capture its story for good: a triptych of botanical illustrations were created by Jacqui Pestell, Işık Güner, Sarah Roberts and Sharon Tingey, while DNA and Herbarium samples were taken for scientific record. Horticulturists had already been collecting seed from the palm for years beforehand, giving the Garden plants of several ages ready to carry its story forward.
A new generation, a new home
A young Sabal mexicana, grown from that seed, now stands in the restored Palm Houses - around 2.4 metres tall, with the full height of the 22-metre dome above it, enjoying far more room than its parent ever had. At ten years old, it is already showing the fan-shaped leaves that will one day fill that space, continuing a story nearly 200 years in the making.
A time capsule has also been buried nearby, containing the names and photographs of the Glasshouse Horticulture team, who cared for, removed and returned the Living Collection during the restoration work. The capsule will be opened in 2070, marking the 400th anniversary of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
The palm may have a new name. But its place at the heart of the Garden's story hasn't changed at all.
Celebrating the Sabal palm
| Time | Description |
| [Simon Allan, Horticulturist] The Sabal palm was thought to be the oldest plant in the Living Collection. The specimen that we had in the Tropical Palm House is 200 years old, possibly more than that. It was growing in the centre of the Tropical Palm House until 2021, when it unfortunately had to be removed. We had to completely empty the glasshouses for the Biomes project restoration. It was an iconic plant and it was difficult to have to remove it, but we knew that we would be able to propagate from it. We've got a few plants of different ages. We've got some which had seeded themselves in the Tropical Palm House, and some of those are about seven or eight years old now, and sort of three or four feet tall. Just beginning to show the characteristics of the adults with the broad fanned leaf. The youngest ones are, sort of, two years old now. We can plant them back out when the restoration project is complete, so that people can enjoy and learn from these plants, as many generations have previously. | |
| [Dr Axel Dalberg Poulsen, Tropical Botanist] My job was to take selected parts of this palm into a collection of plant material. We call it a herbarium. You can think of it as a museum of plant collection. To move from having a very large palm in a huge glasshouse into something that characterizes this species and what can fit into a box, a small box. What you can take is a cross-section of the stem, parts of the leaf, but not a whole leaf, and whatever fertile material is there, like fruits or flowers. The interesting part of my job was to check the identification. For 200 years, this plant has been called Sabal bermudana, but when I checked all the more recent literature, actually it turns out to be Sabal mexicana. | |
| [Jacqui Pestell MBE, Head of Botanical Illustration]] The purpose of painting the Sabal palm was really to record this wonderful tree, 200-year-old tree, for the archives and for science and for the public to enjoy. | |
| The three paintings are, first one, the whole tree, capturing the perspective of the scale of this tree. The second one is the wonderful huge leaf. And the third painting is of a branch of the fruits. | |
| The first step was to photograph the angles of the tree from above. We then figured out, through drawing and sketching, just how we would work these three pieces on to the paper. We then embarked on the artists working at different times on different parts, different areas, and moving around. And it meant, actually, that no one area of the paintings were completed by one artist. The paintings really are a lovely legacy for the Botanic Gardens, and soon they're gonna be framed and in the reception for everyone to see and enjoy. |