The Tools Needed to Prune Queen Palms

Basic Pruning Tools

• The stems of queen palm leaves, as well as its flower stalks and fruit stalks, are stiff and fibrous. To cleanly and effectively cut through the stem fibers, sharp, sufficiently large cutting tools are needed. Hand or bypass pruners usually are not large enough to easily cut through stems. Use loppers, a pruning saw or power chain saw to conduct pruning maintenance on queen palms. Since old fronds typically drop away once they dry out, queen palm trunks are coarse textured but smooth, so no pruning or cutting is needed to keep the trunks looking attractive.

Safety

• Personal safety equipment is needed when pruning a queen palm, regardless of the person doing the work or size of the palm. For small palms, simply wearing thick gloves and eye goggles prevents cuts on hands and accidental poking eye wounds during the moving of fronds. Closed shoes prevent poking wounds or tripping during work and allow the best traction and balance on the ground and when on ladders.

  When the palm is tall and the fronds cannot be reached from the ground, a sturdy A-frame ladder is needed. Use a hard hat and goggles when reaching upward into a queen palm's canopy. Getting hit in the head or face with a severed flower, fruit or leaf stalk isn't pleasant. Eye goggles are especially important to prevent falling sawdust from landing in your upward-gazing eyes.

Palm Size

• Taller queen palms are more dangerous and time consuming to prune compared to short, young plants. Sometimes even an A-frame ladder does not provide the access or safety needed to remove fronds. Extension poles may be used to better reach the palm's canopy. These pruning poles have pivoting cutting blade or pruning saw attachments that allow you to better reach the fronds from either the ground or from a ladder. In some cases, hiring a professional arborist is needed to safely and easily prune queen palms that are more than 20 feet tall. They use scaffolding or hydraulic lifts to reach the palm canopy.

Pruning Insight

• No equipment that may puncture or cut into the queen palm trunk -- such as tree spikes or an ax -- should be used. Palms cannot heal trunk wounds in the same manner as trees do. Any holes or cuts in the palm trunk persist for the rest of the palm's life, and these wounds can become a point of entry for an insect pest or disease.

  Avoid tugging and ripping fronds and flower or fruit stalks from the palm. The torn tissues left after ripping leaves out of the canopy provide an environment for insects and diseases, especially fungal spores, to prosper and spread across the queen palm's leafy canopy. Make pruning cuts as close to the trunk as possible -- but with right-angle cuts to limit the surface area of the wound.