Las Cruces Retirement in the "Palm" of Your Hand

The landscape in Las Cruces is punctuated by soaring palms, their fronts stirring in the desert wind. Unlike tropical palms swaying above a bay, our palms grow straight upward and do not bend in our sometimes-fierce winds. 

Some of the palms are date palms, and long trusses of ripe dates fall into your yard, ready to eat. Others you will see here, usually the pride of the whole landscaping, are Mediterranean Palms, which are good for petite yards at only 20 feet high at maturity, and California Palms, which soar into the sky to 40 feet.

The NMSU campus has many mature palms gracing its lovely grounds. 

 

The tallest palm here is the gorgeous Mexican Fan Palm, which dwarfs many others at 100 feet tall. These stick up all over town. These are the palms you see with a large "pineapple" growning beneath the fronds -- the "pineapple" is the cut ends of the fronts forming a bulged out area that looks like a giganitic pineapple.

If you want a very short palm, consider planting the Pindo Palm, which also produces delicious fruit. A palm that is short for about ten years before suddenly elongating is the Canary Date Palm. Finally, the Windmill Palm has a very wide crown and is short until about its tenth year. It's a show-stopper with the breadth of its fronds, which are also a lot larger than most palms'.

A mature palm adds value to homes here. When you move to Las Cruces, consider adding a palm if your yard doesn't have one!