The graceful Areca Palm is a shrub-like plant that creates a soft and elegant silhouette. Dypsis lutescens is very similar to the Bamboo Palm.

 The plant can grow to a height of 20 or more feet with a spread of 5 to 10 feet. The Areca Palm grows in clusters and tends to become very dense. Thinning of excess stems can make the multi-trunked specimen plant more attractive.

Young plants have reed-like stems, and adults have smooth, ringed, bamboo-like trunks that gently lean away from each other. Usually each leaf stem or trunk has 6 to 8 leaves that gracefully arch downwards. The leaves are feather-shaped, curved and green or yellow-green in color that can reach up 4-8 feet in length. Each leaf has 80-120 leaflets.

The Areca Palm produces small yellowish white flowers on three-foot long drooping stalks below the leaves in spring or early summer. Male and female flowers appear on the same inflorescence.

Dypsis lutescens forms small, 1 inch long, not edible, single seeded yellow-orange fruits.

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