Caryota Mitis

Caryota Mitis, commonly called the fishtail palm because of its very attractive ragged edged leaves which look like fish tails.

It comes from South East Asia, so it prefers a warm, humid
habitat and is more tolerant of a drier soil than overwatering, and although it can stand full sun it can also tolerate low light levels. It prefers to be slightly pot bound and grown indoors can reach about 6ft, as with all palms do not prune, only remove dead branches by cutting off at the stem.

This is a plant that we do not use for a lot of our office plant
displays, as it does best in a warm high humid atmosphere, and not so well in offices with heating that could be switched off at night, or air conditioning which keeps a cooler atmosphere, and the Caryota tends to tip (leaves get brown around the edges and looks dry).

We recently installed one as part of a interior landscaping contract in a poolside area, were it looked absolutely stunning and hopefully should do well, as it was very warm and humid, not the ideal place to be doing a planting job and we could have done with a dip in the pool when we had finished!!