{"id":2310314,"date":"2026-03-03T14:04:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2310314"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:04:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:04:33","slug":"freeze-damage-can-mimic-disease-symptoms-in-palms-entertainment-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/freeze-damage-can-mimic-disease-symptoms-in-palms-entertainment-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Freeze damage can mimic disease symptoms in palms | Entertainment\/Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For a long time in Louisiana, the biggest risk that came with growing palms was incurring freeze damage in the winter.<\/p>\n
In the past decade, however, two diseases have emerged as new threats to these beautiful tropical plants.<\/p>\n
The diseases \u2014 lethal bronzing and lethal yellowing \u2014 are closely related and affect several palm species. They\u2019ve been reported in parishes across southern Louisiana, with infections concentrated in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth those diseases are terminal,\u201d said LSU AgCenter plant doctor Raj Singh. \u201cBut they don\u2019t produce unique symptoms so that you can easily separate them from abiotic disorders like freeze injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The spear leaf of this Chinese windmill palm is dead as a result of infection with lethal yellowing phytoplasma.<\/p>\n
Lethal bronzing and lethal yellowing cause palms\u2019 fronds to turn brown. This is where things get confusing: It\u2019s perfectly normal for palms to exhibit similar symptoms following freezing temperatures and as older fronds die off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cA lot of palms have been sacrificed because a homeowner or landscaper thought they had a disease that was actually freeze damage,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n
Wondering whether your palm has a disease \u2014 or if it was simply affected by recent freezes?<\/p>\n
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This Chinese windmill palm has lethal bronzing.<\/p>\n
There are a few telltale signs of lethal bronzing and lethal yellowing:<\/p>\n
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Speed: Palms infected with these diseases turn brown and die quickly. There is no transition period from green to yellow to brown, Singh said; instead, fronds become brown almost immediately. Palms succumb to the infection within three to five months of the onset of symptoms. Cold injury, by contrast, often appears in stages beginning seven to 10 days after a freeze.<\/li>\n
Lower canopy separation: Infected palms\u2019 lower fronds turn brown, droop and separate from the upper canopy. \u201cThe top of the palm will look like a mushroom,\u201d Singh said. \u201cIn the case of a freeze, the entire palm canopy exposed to cold temperature turns tan to brown.\u201d<\/li>\n
Dead spear leaf: The young, unopened frond at the top of a palm is known as the spear leaf. \u201cIf you see the spear leaf is dead, that means the palm is definitely infected with one or the other disease,\u201d Singh said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This silver palm exhibits symptoms associated with freeze damage.<\/p>\n
While these clues can point toward a lethal bronzing or lethal yellowing infection, they\u2019re not enough to definitively say a palm is infected. To do that, you\u2019ll need to send in a sample to the AgCenter Plant Diagnostic Center, which Singh oversees.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth taking this extra step to figure out for sure whether one of these diseases or a different ailment or an abiotic stressor is in play. Freeze-damaged palms sometimes \u2014 but not always \u2014 can recover with proper care and don\u2019t necessarily have to be removed from the landscape.<\/p>\n
A palm stricken with lethal bronzing or lethal yellowing, on the other hand, needs to be taken down immediately. This can help prevent disease spread to nearby palms, and the infected palm will die soon anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cOnce the palm is infected, there is no cure,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n
Preventive treatments are available to help healthy palms resist phytoplasma infection, which is transmitted and spread by a small leafhopper insect called Haplaxius crudus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will feed on the phloem of the palm, and while they\u2019re feeding, they will transmit the phytoplasma into the phloem system of the plant,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n
The phytoplasma hampers translocation of nutrients inside the palm, essentially starving it to death.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re interested in growing palms, you can be careful in choosing species as another preventive measure. Canary Island date palms, Chinese fan palms, Chinese windmill palms, medjool date palms, queen palms and silver date palms are all susceptible to lethal bronzing and lethal yellowing. Sabal, or cabbage, palms are a bit more tolerant of these diseases than other species.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n
\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a long time in Louisiana, the biggest risk that came with growing palms was incurring freeze damage in the winter. In the past decade, however, two diseases have emerged as new threats to these beautiful tropical plants. The diseases \u2014 lethal bronzing and lethal yellowing \u2014 are closely related and affect several palm species. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2310315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2310314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Freeze-damage-can-mimic-disease-symptoms-in-palms-EntertainmentLife.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2310316,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310314\/revisions\/2310316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2310315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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