Palm Tree Magnesium Deficiency: Detect and Treatment

Here you will find out all the things for detecting and treating palm tree magnesium deficiency in various types of indoor and outdoor palms.

Palm tree magnesium deficiency is a common physiological palm disease, especially in highly leached soils. You may spot its symptoms in houseplant palms too. I’m a plant pathologist who works as a horticultural advisor and wrote this post to tell you all the things you must know to detect and treat palm tree magnesium deficiency.

First, let’s look at the role of magnesium in plants. Keep reading.

What Is the Role of Magnesium in Plants?

Magnesium is one of the essential nutrients in plants. It involves critical biochemical and physiological processes such as:

• Chlorophyll synthesis
• Enzymes activation
• Protein synthesis
• Production of Photoassimilates

Magnesium is placed in the central core of the chlorophyll molecule.  As you know chlorophyll is an essential part of plant photosynthesis. So, the magnesium deficiency will result in a shortage of chlorophyll. It will cause a poor plant with yellow leaves and stunting growth symptoms. I discussed it in my other article about “Is Magnesium good for plants?“.

Now, come on to find the symptoms of palm tree magnesium deficiency.

Signs of Magnesium Deficiency in Palm Trees.

As you found out above, Magnesium (Mg) have a critical role in Chlorophyll synthesis and photosynthesis. Thus, in magnesium deficiency, the symptoms of yellowing of the leaves (chlorotic) will be expected. Please note that you often spot the chlorotic symptoms in the old leaves of your palm tree (often mid to lower leaves).

In this situation, the old leaves will show broad yellow bands along their margins (on the outer parts of the entire leaf palms or their leaflet) with a distinct green centre. See the palm tree magnesium deficiency pictures to detect it in the various palm types.

Palm Tree Magnesium Deficiency Vs Potassium Deficiency

People are often confused between the palm tree magnesium deficiency and potassium deficiency. To make it easy for you, I compared their symptoms in the below table.

Palm Tree Magnesium Deficiency	Potassium Deficiency in Palms
The symptoms are distributed uniformly on the old leaf. The leaves have yellow to orange margins with distinct green centres.	The symptoms will increase gradually from the base to the tip of the old leaf. The leaves are usually orange to bronze on the tip which gradually shades to green at the base.
Mg deficiency is not associated with necrosis	Its primary symptoms are leaf tip burn and light-coloured to brown necrotic spots that are spread over the leaf.

Golden Tip: Coexisting the Magnesium and Potassium Deficiencies on the Same Palm

As I told you before, palm tree magnesium deficiency is not associated with necrosis symptoms (brown and dead parts), but sometimes you may spot the old leaves showing tip burn symptoms (necrosis of the tips of the leaflets) while the mid leaves show the symptoms of magnesium deficiency.

Please note that in this situation, this necrosis is because of the potassium (K) deficiency in your palm tree that coexisted with the magnesium deficiency symptoms. A palm can show symptoms of both deficiencies on a single leaf too.

Palm Tree Magnesium Deficiency Causes

After you detect the problem, you must find out why it is caused. Your palm tree shows the symptoms of magnesium deficiency when there is insufficient Mg in the soil or your plant cannot absorb it enough. There are two reasons for this phenomenon:

•  ➡ When the soil has little cation exchange capacity (such as sandy soils), the Magnesium will be leached easily and you spot the symptoms of Magnesium deficiency in the plants.
•  ➡ In addition, high level of some nutrition such as N, K, and Ca in soil has an antagonistic effect on Mg absorption by plants, so, the symptoms of the palm tree magnesium deficiency will be induced or exacerbated.

Now, come on to solve the problem.

Palm Tree Magnesium Deficiency Treatment

Although Magnesium deficiency often doesn’t kill the palms, if you don’t treat it, your palm tree will get weaker and weaker. To solve this problem, first, you must analyze the soil:

•  ➡ If your soil has little cation exchange capacity, you must improve its texture by adding soil enhancements such as organic materials.
•  ➡ measure the amount of other nutrition in the soil. The high concentration of some nutrients will limit the absorption of Mg.
•  ➡ Check the PH of the soil.  The most availability of magnesium to plants is when the soil PH is between 6.5 to 7.5. In lower and higher PHs, its availability for plants will be decreased.

After improving your soil characteristics, you can fertilize your palm tree in the following ways (however the damaged leaves never get green again 🙁 , but your palm tree will reward you with new greenery leaves 😀 ):

 💡 On acid soils: Add Dolomite or Magnesium oxide to the soil.

About the Dolomite, it is one of the most commonly used limestone forms that contains both calcium and magnesium. I recommend it for acidic soils because it can improve soil pH by neutralizing acidic soil.

You can add a dolomitic limestone to the substrate of your potted plant but you must note that any dolomite will be exhausted after six months and you may spot the palm tree magnesium deficiency again.

 💡 On neutral to alkaline soils: add Prilled kieserite to the soil. It is the slowly soluble monohydrate form of magnesium sulfate that is less soluble than Epsom salts. Prilled kieserite is a slow-release form of Mg that is very effective in palm tree magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) can also be effective for a quick fix of palm tree magnesium deficiency symptoms.

If you want a long-term solution, I recommend using the coated Potassium-Magnesium sulfate.

Based on my experiences, foliar spraying with Mg fertilizers has little effect on palm tree magnesium deficiency. It may be due to they provide a few amounts of Mg relative to the amount that your palm requires.

if you are interested in preventing Magnesium deficiency in plants, read my other article to tell you.

Conclusion

Palm tree magnesium deficiency is one of the challenges of indoor and outdoor gardeners and often ask me about it. I tried to help you detect the magnesium deficiency correctly with various images and told you how to fix it. do you think the above remedies will work well? Do you know other treatments? Please share your experiences with our readers and feel free to ask me your questions below this page.