A painfully slow grower, this tree has a massive, stately appearance in maturity. Its trunk features persistent leaf bases that form the trademark crisscross pattern of the Sabal palm. Denuded of leaf bases, the mature trunk is ringed but relatively smooth, with the physique of a Roman column, or more germane to Southern California, the pillar of a highway overpass. Upon this 4 foot wide column a large crown of especially long leaf stalks, or petioles, protrude 7 to 9 feet from the stem supporting deeply folded, light green, costapalmate leaves, often radically arched in the middle for the last one third of the leaf, with wide segments that tend to droop toward the tips. This palms powerful presence dominates any corporate power lawn and adds a more tropical flare than the P. canarinses. It also makes an impressive addition if you have a bit of acreage.
There are many species of Sabals, and they can be quite difficult to distinguish from one another, in part because they so easily hybridized through cross breading. At the Grove we have two varieties of the S. causiarum, one with an abundance for papery lingules wrapping the petioles, the other with scarcely any. This version lacks the papery lingules.
