An elegant Australian island palm with arching feather-shaped fronds, the most popular indoor palm of grand hotels and parlors since the Victorian era.
Description
Kentia palm has a slender ringed trunk topped with broad arching fronds divided into long, dark green, drooping leaflets. Indoors it grows slowly and stays narrow.
Cultivation
It is unusually tolerant of low light, dry air, and cool rooms compared with other palms, which made it a fixture of unheated Victorian conservatories.
Uses
Long associated with luxury interiors, Kentia palm appears in countless paintings of Edwardian drawing rooms. All commercial seed is still wild-harvested on its tiny native Lord Howe Island.