There is a shopping center near my work which recently had some palm trees planted. One peculiar thing I noticed was that the palm trees’ leaves were still tied up. I wondered why they would leave them like that.
I can imagine they tie the leaves to make the trees easier to transport, but why not untie the ropes holding the leaves down when they plant the trees?
I’m not sure where I learned this, but one thing about it is that the ties are typically made out of natural twine. Eventually, the twine will rot through naturally, so there’s just not that much need to untie the leaves.
Speculation on my part, but it could be a sign of health for the palm, that it gets established enough and keeps growing enough so that the fronds break through the twine out of their own increased weight.
Palms have a relatively shallow root system for a tree their size. The leaves are tied up after transplant to prevent the wind from knocking them over (the surface area is larger for untied palms than tied palms). Once the roots become more established, you can untie the palm.
Also, tied up leaves lose less moisture than freed ones. Water is critical after a palm is transplanted, and leaving the leaves tied conserves the plant’s moisture.
The ties rot after several months, by which time the tree has established enough roots to fully supply its water needs.
And you can tell your out of town friends that the tied up palms are budding, like we did with my college buddy from Kansas.
Another possibility is that they want the fronds out of the way for other work to be done after the trees were installed. They did this in San Francisco a few years ago when building a new streetcar line - the trees went in after the heavy trackwork was done, but before the overhead trolley wire was strung. It sounds backwards, but planting the trees after the wires would require bringing them in straight down from high above with a crane, and still put the wiring at risk.