As houseplants, they typically stay closer to six feet tall and grow very slowly, making them ideal for indoor spaces where you don’t want a plant that will quickly outgrow its spot.
Quick Look
Common name(s): Ruffled or Vanuatu fan palm, palas palm
Plant type: Evergreen monocotyledonous perennial
Hardiness (USDA Zone): 10-11 (outdoors)
Native to: Vanuatu, Solomon Islands
Bloom time / season: Evergreen
Exposure: Bright, indirect light
Soil type: Loose, humus-rich, well-draining
Soil pH: 6.5-7.5, neutral
Time to maturity: Up to 15 years
Mature size: 6 feet tall by 5 feet wide (indoors)
Best uses: Houseplant, landscape tree
Taxonomy
Order: Arecales
Family: Arecaceae
Genus: Licuala
Species: Grandis
In summer, established plants may produce drooping clusters of small, yellowish-white to cream-colored flowers that emerge from among the leaves.
These blooms develop into marble-sized fruits that start out green and ripen to a glossy, bright red.
Each fruit contains a single seed. While flowering and fruiting are common outdoors, it’s rare on indoor specimens.
The petioles or leaf stems are long and slender, and they’re armed with small, curved spines or teeth along the margins, particularly near the base.
Handle your ruffled fan palm with care, or wear gloves when working around it.
In its island home, this palm grows in the equivalent of USDA Hardiness Zones 10 and 11 in moist, rich soil and dappled sunlight that filters through the canopy.
You don’t need a rainforest in your yard to enjoy a ruffled fan palm, it can be grown indoors in a large container with bright, indirect light.
How to Grow
You’re going to need space for this plant. It will grow tall and the ruffled leaves like to spread out. If you give it the right conditions, it can reach about six feet tall and about five feet wide.
Choose a large container – it doesn’t need to be massive, since these palms have shallow, small root systems.
Young plants are fine in a one-gallon container, but you’ll eventually want to move up to a five- to 10-gallon container as your palm matures.
Soil
Fill the container with a rich, loose, water-retentive, loamy potting mixture.
I love FoxFarm Ocean Forest Potting Mix. It has forest humus, bat guano, and earthworm castings, all the good stuff that this palm would enjoy in its natural environment.
You can find 12-quart bags of FoxFarm Ocean Forest Potting Mix available via Amazon.
Light
This isn’t a houseplant that you can tuck into a dim space and expect it to thrive.
At a minimum, it needs four hours of bright, indirect sunlight, but six or more is better. The more light, the taller it will grow.
Water
You want the soil to be consistently moist but not wet at all times.
