This plant does its best in full sun, but also tolerate considerable shade, in most any soil. As lush as it looks, is quite drought tolerant, but looks best in a good deep soil with some irrigation. It is cold hardy to about 25 ° F. A great plant for the garden or even as a container specimen in a large pot that requires very little maintenance to look good besides cutting off any browning senescing leaves and the spent flower spikes.

Doryanthes palmeri has a restricted natural distribution in the McPherson Ranges of southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. The name for the genus comes from a combination of the Greek words 'doratos' which means "a spear" and 'anthos' meaning "flower" in reference to the long spear shaped inflorescence of the closely related Doryanthes excelsa. It was given this name in 1802 by the Portuguese priest, statesman, philosopher and botanist José Francisco Correia de Serra (1750–1823), who was a close friend of Sir Joseph Banks. Walter Hill, the Colonial Botanist and Director of the Botanic Gardens at Brisbane discovered Doryanthes palmeri in 1860 but it was officially described in 1873 by the British botanist George Bentham. The name honors his countryman and fellow botanist Edward Palmer.

Recent treatment places this plant in the Doryanthaceae although formerly it was previously considered to be in the Agave (Agavaceae) family. There are two species in the genus, Doryanthes palmeri and Doryanthes excelsa. The foliage of the two is similar, though D. palmeri a larger plant and in flower they are easy to tell apart with Doryanthes excelsa having a much taller flower stalk (to over 20 feet tall) that rises vertically out of the center of the plant and topped with a compact capitate head of flowers while the shorter flower stalk on D. palmeri is angled away from the center of the plant because of the weight of the flowers, which are spread out more along the inflorescence. Both species of Doryanthes generally take at least 10 years to mature and flower from seed though some plants have been reported to flower at half this age. We have grown this interesting and attractive plant since 1982. 

Information displayed on this page about Doryanthes palmeri is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.