How to Measure a Palm Tree
Measuring a palm tree might sound simple, but it’s important to get it right and to make sure everyone—from designer or landscape architect and their client to grower, shipper, and installer—is on the same page. We’re here to help explain how.
When selecting specimen palm trees, height is a key factor. Growers rely on the trunk height for measuring and pricing palm trees by the trunk foot. The trunk height runs from the soil line up to the base of the newest emerging leaf in the crown. This means that the top end of the measurement includes the portion of the trunk holding the crown of leaves. Measuring from the ground to the base of the crown—”clear trunk”—is unreliable because it varies according to how much the crown has been pruned. Measuring the overall height of the tree, from the soil to to tips of the leaves, varies from moment to moment as leaves move on a single specimen and varies across specimens according to their sun exposure and other growing conditions.
Most palm trees have a single trunk. We multiply the price per foot by the trunk-height measurement to calculate the price. Some palms grow multiple stems from the base or are planted several to the container. The measurements of all the trunks are added together and then multiplied by the price per foot to determine the total price of the specimen.
“BTH” is sometimes used as shorthand for trunk height. It can misleading because it stands for “brown trunk height” or “bare trunk height,” implying that the measurement reaches only to the lowest leaves. Again, the industry standard runs to the center of the crown to the base of the newest emerging leaf. Measuring to the bottom of the crown is less common and less reliable.
Make sure you let your client and designer know early in the process how their palm trees are measured to set everyone up for success.
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