Bulgaria Windmill Palm. For a palm to be native to China, but have the cultivar name of 'Bulgaria', there must be quite a story. For this we must thank Karil Donov, a native Bulgarian. As a child he was fascinated with plants, more tropical ones in particular, and he majored in tropical and subtropical agriculture. There were four Trachycarpus fortunei growing at the historical museum in Plovdiv, a town in Bulgaria, which were moved indoors each winter, but finally they got to large to move inside, so they were planted outdoors in 1973. Surprisingly, they thrived, even though many winters got to -4°F. Through the years it was noted that these palms had thicker trunks and the tips of the leaves did not "droop" as most which were imported from Italy. The source of these four palms is unknown. Since Trachycarpus are dioecious (separate male and female plants), sometimes later the female trees began to produce seed, and the offspring resulted in the same characteristics as the parents. On January 6, 1993, temperatures got to -17.5°F, and the palms survived. It is typical here each winter for temperatures to remain at freezing or below for weeks on end. In our observations, these have proven to be much faster in growth than the typical Trachycarpus which we have grown for years. For best growth and thicker trunks it is best to grow them in full to part sun, even though I have seen them thriving in almost 100% shade. Give good drainage. As all of these palms are seedlings, there is no way of knowing whether a plant is male or female, and of course, one needs both sexes to produce seed. Mr. Donov has a website dedicated solely to this palm: https://www.polarpalm.net/en/plov.html. Make sure to click on the English flag in the upper left corner to get the English translation, unless of course you are fluent in Bulgarian. The plants we ship are approximately 18 in. tall as shown in the first picture. The second picture is typical of a Windmill Palm, but is not the cultivar 'Bulgaria'. Notice that this palm has weeping tips to its leaves, which is more typical of the species.
Zones 6-10
