I am not sure if you grow T.princeps-green(Nova). It is really a fast growing palm ,probably the fastest one in its genus other than its longer and broader leafblades when young and relatively regular and narrower leaflets of split leaves.
T.princeps exhibit good cold hardiness as some others reported even when young.
I dont grow T.martianus which is also very attractive,and it is also one of my favorites .

Photo of T.princeps

Thoto of T.princeps-green

Denis,

I don't currently have a 'manipur' (which was offically described as a new species, Trachycarpus ukhrulensis, by Lorek in 2006... Change your tags!)

I'm not aware of any successful crosses between the two different seed types in Trachycarpus, but I can think of no reason why they wouldn't work (they are VERY closely related). I do have a small T. fortunei var. wagnerianus and a decent sized T. fortunei 'nanital' strain (I say strain because you can't have a cultivar unless you're reproducing the plants asexually, or can guarentee provenance!), which I am hesitant to plant out. Your planned crosses between the fortunei 'species' should work without much problem. I see that Europalms is now selling hybrids involving T. nanus, which should be interesting. As for rostrata it is VERY hardy, able to handle temperatures in the zone 4 range (I've heard rumors of -35C in Colorado), as long as its dry. I tried one here without moisture protection and it failed the first year. Next time I'll stop the snow from accumulating on it!

Garry- There has been speciulation that sp. nova is simply a hybrid between fortunei and princeps... Not sure if there is any truth to that, nor if you have further information. If it is, it certainly distorts my assumption that all 'reniform' seeded Trachycarpus are the same species, and would therefore be called fortunei (i.e. it is showing hybrid vigour)!

Hey Garry
Good to here from you!

I don't think there is much doubt that Nova is FortxPrinceps,a great palm and fast growing.
All my Nova seedlings are out pacing my other seedlings.

I am getting some Nanusxwag this spring and will probably break down and buy Nanus as well.
I am such a Trachy junky!

Islander
I wish you luck in all you endeavors sounds like your up to some fun stuff!
Fortxwag is a great cross,beautiful palm.
I think another fun one would be Princepsxwag!
As far as I know all the reniform Trachys can be crossed.
I have never heard of Latisectus or Martianus ever being crossed successfully with reniform Trachys-Good luck

Jim- where are you getting nanus x fort v. wag? If it's from Europalms, is there much of an import fee???

I do think that martianus (Last I checked latisectus is now synanomous with martianus, http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jun252007/1678.pdf)x fortunei (or reniform) would work... There isn't really a good reason why it wouldn't, if you look at the genetics there is something like 14bp difference in their ITS sequence, so unless there has been a chromosome doubling event (and even if there has) they should be interfertile...

Here is an interesting note from the article above... And, if adopted in the reniform group WILL mean that many currently recognized species will be lumped in with fortunei (not just wagneriauns):

"The infraspecific classification of T. martianus as presented here is also supported by ITS analysis, which showed that T. martianus ssp. martianus and T. martianus ssp. latisectus differ in 15 base pairs from T. fortunei and T. nanus, whereas the subspecies differ from each other only in one base pair. " (Lorek, 2007). He fails to mention that T. fortunei, T. fortunei var. wagnerianus, and T. nanus also differ in 1 base-pair for the same sequence...

OK

Fine

I think a cool cross would be Manipur xPrinceps!

That would be a really interesting palm Jim, I agree. Easy to protect too because of the size.

Bill

Hi Paul,
I am not sure if T.princeps-green is a hybrid between T.fortunei and T.princeps ,though they are from the same area.It is too complicated to make a final conclusion as there seems to be some new varieties from this area as I saw,thus making the analysis far harder.and I guess DNA could detect the gene map one day in the future.
T.princeps-green are different from T.princeps by showing no or very little white powder to the underside of the leaves and also from T.fortunei by exhibiting fast growing habits.
Yes, Jim, I collected few Nanus* fortunei seeds this year and they are pretty big .
I also found the interesting phenomenon that the seedlings grow faster than regular T. fortunei .Plus they have wider and longer leafblades.They are probably the fastest growing Trachycarpus variety. The seedlings stand more erect and have fewer, narrower and more evenly divided leaflets as opposed to wider and irregular leaflets in T.fortunei seedlings with leaves spreading around.
The similarity T.princeps-green share with T.princeps is that the split leaflets are narrower forming about 30 degrees angle when they start to have split leaves whereas T.fortunei develop much wider leaves of 180 degree across.

Regarding Trachycaprus genus, there are dozens of varieties.Except the officially recognized species, there should be some more like T.princeps-green, T.fortunei Tesan , T.fortunei Winsan and Misan.I know these may sound unfamiliar to many people here. Over thousands of years cultivation of trachycarpus in China, there are a few different cultivation varieties or species in certain areas. I spent much time traveling across the country due to business related work and found some trachycarpus from certain areas do show special features from those from the other areas. In the long history of human activities, the local climate and geographical factors play an important role in the evolution of these different varieties like T.princeps ,T.nanus and T.princeps-green, familiar to us all.But there are far more varieties than that. It is like Magnolia , they fall into 3 kinds of varieties in term of color ,but if we use a more detailed ,precise criteria, there are dozens of sub-species and varieties distributed across the country.It is not difficult to understand that there should be many more varieties than we know now. Because trachycarpus is very common in China , mostly to the south of Changjiang river and no special attention is paid to this common tree as many foreign palms rush into the market and they are neglected in some way like the air we breathe everyday. So no systematic and comprehensive studies have been done on this species.

Garry-
Interesting comments. Perhaps a population genetic approach would shed some light on the distribution of what we're calling species, varietas, subspeices, and cultivated forms. When we talk about genetic-maps what we're talking about is finding where in the genome a particular gene is found. I think what you mean by gene-map is the population genetic approarch I descrbed above (looking at the genetic differences between/among Trachys in different areas)... It would be interesting, and could probably be funded through the European Palm Society among others.

I come from a purely scientific background, so certain words, to me, must be used to refer to particular things. Don't take offense if I point out the proper scientific terms for things, It's part of my training and is not intended as an attack... I assume that English is not your first language, which will make talking about these things more difficult for you.

Your cultivated forms 'tesan', 'wisan' etc. (named for the places they're from?) do sound interesting, and from what I hear are mostly breeding true in the seeds that have been sown here in North America. I am puzzled by the larger size of the 'Tesan' seeds, I wonder if it's not due to chromosome doubling (polyploidy) in these palms (it's been known to happen, and could, in theory, allow for greater expression of cold hardiness genes). Or perhaps is an adpatation that allows seedlings more time to establish before winter (bigger seed = more 'food' for the developing seedling)? Do they grow more quickly from seed (do they size-up faster)?

Denis- Hybrid seedlings often look more 'maternal', and there are many different explainations for why this might be. The simplest explaination is that in addition to 1/2 of the nuclear genetic material (i.e. the 1/2 the chromosomes) the maternal plant also passes on its chloroplast DNA (the organelle that harvest sunlight) and the mitochondrial DNA.

Tesan (Mt.form)to my knowledge are the ones with the large seeds.Garry should have the final word on that.
Tesan grow at a rapid pace for me and are growing even faster now as they mature.
The caveat is,they grow very dense/compact for me at their current stage of development so,it is will not necessarily be as big as "plain"Fortunei-
but counting(LPY)-made up term- leaves per year 🙂 it looks to be on par with Fortunei.
My "Nova"seedlings are currently 3 leaves for every 2 of other seedling-so-faster for sure.

Jim- What do you think about that article posted on the Euro board about T. ukh. being the same as T. oreophilius?

Denis- This means that you must change your labels again... T. 'Manipur' is now synanomous with T. orpephilius, and Trachycarpus ukhrulensis, is an invalid name! You should label them T. oreophilius 'Manipur' to avoid confusion 🙄

I have to save some space in my brain to learn the names of a "few" more plants so I'm sticking with Manipur! 😉
I mean(no offense Martin)but these are the same guys that brought us Takil,no oops it's really Naini Tal,now it's Fortunei.

An interesting explanation you have made,Paul. I see your point as I got some basic knowledge of plant physiology studying garden design as a major in college.It is easier for me to understand the words by reading than writing
Tesan, Winsan and Misan are the description words for the type containing either where they are from or the distinct characters they have.
When we talk about species, we ignore the more precise division of subspecies, varieties and forms.In scientific sense, Tesan and Misan could be cultivars (cultivated variety ), Winsan a forma. As for T.nanus, T.princeps, T.princeps -green(nova),it is hard to tell if it is an independent species or subspecies or variety or whatever in my view, though they present unique characristics But there seems to be a transitional type with the mixed features of white stuff in T.princeps and broader strap seedling leaves in T.princeps-green, it could be helpful to explain the relationship between the latter two.See it here http://www.palmsociety.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?boardid=1&show=31&page=1&topicid=2352
The same interesting phenomenon is that when I traveled from the south up to the north .Trachycarpus are getting increasingly stronger with bigger seeds where more energy and food is stored to feed the offspring before the early winter comes. Plus, in the same area, two or three varieties are available at the same time . Say, T.fortunei Misan, the small yellow green leaves with slim trunk are only distributed in a remote mountain ,after the first several ones were found in the a park, differentiating themselves from the tall and robust regular T.fortunei nearby.
I am pretty interested seeing the various features they are exhibiting and it is also fun exchanging these ideas and growing experiences with people like here. Plus, far more varieties are surely to be uncovered as time goes on.
Jim, I noticed that your Tesan is planted out under 12F this winter? I think better for you to grow them from seeds in the ground allowing for more roots to be well established to adapt to the cold ，remember that they are originally from the mountain in the wild . You may try it this way to see how it goes.