Dypsis bosseri
Dypsis bosseri seems to grow best in a wet spot. They tolerate the cold quite well, but we're not sure yet how they would handle a slight frost..? They do grow much better, and grow slightly larger in the tropics as opposed to the subtropics. Compare the photos of the same form growing at Jeff’s in Hawaii and then the photos of this same form growing in the subtropics on the Sunshine coast. Notice the size difference of the leaves..! Not the height of the plant. As a juvenile this species, or form, that Jeff Marcus and Clayton York are growing will be very hard to tell apart from D.hildebrandtii, D.forficifolia, D.lantzeana and a few others in this group.
In addition, there is this strap leaf form. As you can see from these habitat photos taken by Phil Arrowsmith, taken during his recent trip to Madagascar with John Dransfield, that this form looks totally different to these others. It is almost like it’s another species; “especially with these long petioles” as the description in Palms of Madagascar refers to the “petioles being absent”. So the only way you could tell that this was a form of Dypsis bosseri would be to have it flower and count the stamen, (see photo) Many of these smaller Dypsis can have more than one form, and just to make things more confusing, they can look totally different to what we know and expect a particular species to look like.
