If you see a fan palm with a thick grey trunk and blue-green leaves growing somewhere it clearly shouldn't survive — a dry slope, a salty coastal strip, thin rocky soil — there's a decent chance it's Brahea edulis, the Guadalupe palm. It comes from a single island off Baja California and has been planted well beyond it for exactly that toughness.
A few identification points: the leaves are costapalmate (a slight upward fold rather than a flat fan), the trunk stays fairly slim for a palm this size, and it flowers with long, arching sprays that hang below the crown before the small dark fruit sets. Growth is slow — expect a foot or two of trunk height every few years, not the fast climb you'd get from a queen palm.
It isn't a date palm, and it isn't grown for its fruit. The berries are edible but sparse on flesh, nothing close to what a Sayer date offers off the tree. What it shares with Phoenix dactylifera is drought tolerance and patience with poor soil, which is why both species turn up in arid landscaping long before anyone irrigates properly.
Full sun, infrequent deep watering, and soil that drains fast are the three things to get right. It tolerates light frost, down to roughly -8°C, and rarely needs pruning beyond removing old fronds as they brown.
For anyone growing it as an ornamental alongside a working date orchard, the two species make sense side by side — one for the fruit, one for the shade and structure. Our own Sayer stock is described on the home page, sourcing notes are on About Us, and orchard questions can go through Contact Us.