Along with hurricane season comes the seasonal palm pruners offering their services — especially if you live at the beach.

Every weekend, someone is knocking at my door after pruning the neighbor’s palms on my street. Most of the regulars know that I am picky about how my palms are pruned and assure me that they will prune them the way I want them pruned, not the way they pruned my neighbors’ palms.

So are others asking them to over-prune their palms, knowing that these practices will have a negative impact on the health of their palms?

Palm maintenance is often misunderstood and pruning tops the list. Landscape crews typically leave about 8 to 10 leaves sticking out of the top, giving the tree a Mohawk haircut. This is sometimes referred to as a hurricane cut.

If palms are part of your landscape and they are too tall for you to maintain, educate yourself on the correct way to prune them so you can insist that the job be done correctly.

A healthy palm should have a full canopy of leaves going right down to the trunk of the palm. Old leaves at the base will die, hang down and eventually drop off. Seed heads are messy and can create lots of undesirable seedlings throughout the landscape, so it is beneficial to remove these before seeds drop.

The primary goal in pruning palms is to remove the flower stalks or seed heads and leaves that are completely dead. The easiest way to describe it is to think of the hands on the face of a clock. Leaves should not be removed above the 9 and 3 positions. But most palms are pruned at the 11 and 1 positions. Perhaps one reason they are over-pruned is because it is easier to remove the flowers/seed heads if all the leaves below are removed. The practice is so common in the commercial trade that most clients think this is the preferred method.

So what’s the big deal about over-pruning?

The main problem with over-pruning is that removing too many leaves from the canopy puts the palm in a deficit mode by taking away the food-producing capacity of the plant. If this practice is repeated year after year, leaves will get smaller and trunk diameter will also get smaller.

Most landscape palms suffer from potassium deficiency because they are not fertilized correctly. Older leaves develop yellowish-orange spots and leaf tips will turn brown. Potassium is mobile within the plant, so when deficient, it is moved up to new leaves. Even though these leaves may not look great, they are providing potassium to the new growth. It is best to keep these leaves until they are completely brown and to adjust fertilizer applications to compensate for the deficiency. Refer to this document for fertilizer recommendations:

Heavy pruning will make potassium deficiency more severe and can lead to the death of the palm.

Another reason to avoid over-pruning is that it makes the new bud more susceptible to wind damage. The hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 showed that palms with “hurricane cuts” were more susceptible to having the tops snapped off compared to palms with full crowns. It is also suspected that a full crown of leaves provides some cold protection to tender buds in the event of a hard freeze.

Whenever palms are pruned, you run the risk of attracting pests and/or spreading diseases. When cutting the leaf bases of palms, a volatile chemical is released that attracts palm weevils, the largest weevil in North America. The larvae of this weevil feed on the soft tissue in the developing bud and are deadly to the palm.

In addition, there are some diseases (Fusarium wilt of the Canary Island date palm) that are spread by infected pruning tools. Pruning tools should be sterilized with a disinfectant for five minutes to kill the disease before moving to the next palm.

To avoid diseases like trunk rot, remove the leaves close to the trunk, but don't cut into the trunk and never pull off leaves as this, too, will create an open wound to the trunk. Do not allow pruning crews to use pruning spikes on the palms as this also creates wounds to the trunk.

It’s expensive to remove dead palms or trees from the landscape, so take charge and insist that the job be done right to ensure the health of the plant.

For more detailed information on pruning palms, go to


Terry Brite DelValle is a horticulture extension agent with the Duval County Extension Service and the University of Florida/IFAS.