Bactris genus cold tolerance

[SDPirate]

Anyone growing these palms on the mainland?  Interested in attempting Bactris ferruginea but have no idea if they would withstand our winters.  Not a whole lot of info out there on their ability to take cold, I did find some page saying that will not take even 32F.

[nullzero]

Bactris gasipaes survived around 32f to 34f for about 4 hours at a time multiple times in the past 7 years. Did not see any bad dieback.

[NateTheGreat]

Anyone growing these palms on the mainland?  Interested in attempting Bactris ferruginea but have no idea if they would withstand our winters.  Not a whole lot of info out there on their ability to take cold, I did find some page saying that will not take even 32F.

I looked into that one a bit too. You probably found the same Palmtalk threads I did. With how passionate palm people are, I think the fact that nobody even in Florida seems to be growing it means it's probably not possible. Plus it's really spiny, and like 40 ft tall. IIRC FFF is growing Bactris setosa though, so that at last must have some cold tolerance.

Some nice pictures: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/48939-bactris-ferruginea/

[SDPirate]

Yea figured it would probably be a waste of time but it looks like a neat palm.  I guess even if it survived here it would probably be rare and marginal like coconut palms and not fruit ever.