Lipstick Palm- Cyrtostachys renda small

The Palm Every Tropical Gardener Wants and Few Can Grow

There is no palm quite like Cyrtostachys renda. Nothing else in the plant world produces that colour — the crown shafts and leaf bases a lacquered, saturated red so vivid and so unambiguous that it reads as almost artificial, blazing against the deep green of the fronds like something a designer placed there deliberately. Which, in a sense, you will be.

The Lipstick Palm is the defining plant of the luxury tropical garden. Resort designers reach for it instinctively. Visitors to gardens that have it ask about it before anything else. Southern tropical gardeners covet it with a particular intensity, because they know what it demands and they know they cannot give it — which makes growing one in the right climate all the more satisfying.

What It Needs — and What It Gives Back

Cyrtostachys renda is a palm that rewards those who can meet it on its own terms. It wants genuine tropical heat and humidity, consistently moist soil, and shelter from cold and drying winds. It will not compromise on any of these. South of the Wet Tropics it becomes a difficult, grudging plant; here on the Cassowary Coast it is in its element — growing with the unhurried confidence of a plant that knows it is exactly where it should be, building over time into the multi-stemmed, jewel-coloured clump that makes it one of the most photographed plants in any garden it inhabits.

At four to five metres with that extraordinary crown, it functions as a feature plant, a poolside statement, an architectural accent in a resort-style landscape, or the centrepiece of a sheltered courtyard where its requirements can be carefully managed. Plant it where it will be seen. It has earned that.

The photo shows the small size vs the larger size we also have available.

We also have everything from small to advanced plants available for pickup at the nursery.

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