Give palms time to bounce back

Take a drive anywhere in the Tampa Bay area, and you're likely to see brown, freeze-damaged palms.

If you don't have to leave the driveway to see them, you may be itching to cut away all the khaki and beige.

Don't do it - yet.

Doug Caldwell, the commercial landscape horticulture extension agent for the University of Florida in Collier County, offers these suggestions for dealing with cold-bullied palms:

• Avoid the temptation to immediately trim damaged leaves. Leaves should not be removed as long as they contain at least some green tissue.

• Protect the apical bud. All new leaves of a palm develop from the apical bud, and that's the part to protect if the palm is to continue to grow and thrive. The bases of the leaves - the part of the leaf stem that's attached to the body of the palm - helps protect the apical bud, so it's important not to over-trim palms.

If the emerging (spear) leaf can easily be pulled from the bud, remove it immediately. In that case, some growers recommend spraying or drenching the bud with copper bactericide to prevent infection, but there's no research to confirm whether this is effective.

• If the spear leaf pushes out but looks dead, the palm may still recover. Give it through the summer.

• Any growth is a sign of life. New growth may be severely malformed or damaged, but any growth is good. Subsequent new leaves should gradually improve, but it can take a year for growth to return to normal.

• Once the palm has produced two to three new leaves, the severely damaged leaves can be removed.

• Remove hazardous palms. If you see freeze damage on the palm's trunk, there's probably substantial internal damage to its vascular and structural tissue. These palms can pose a hazard and should be removed.

• Be wary of salespeople pushing palm treatments now. They're probably of little or no value at this point.