Both kinds of palmettos produce a cluster of white flowers in the spring. During a warm, sunny day, you can find many insect species as well as a great number of individual insects visiting the sweet-smelling palmetto flowers. Palmetto berries develop soon after the flowers drop. Initially, the fruit is green. As the fruit slowly ripens, it changes to yellow, then orange, and, finally, turns black by October.
Many animals are dependent on palmettos for survival.
Black bears, white-tailed deer, raccoons, opossums, gray fox, wild turkeys, bobwhite quail, and gopher tortoises eat palmetto berries. Gopher tortoises and cattle eat parts of the leaves. Florida scrub-jays, grasshopper sparrows, and wild turkeys collect parts of the plant to use as nesting material. Panther, black bear, and white-tailed deer use the protected cover provided by palmettos as a birthing den. Vines often use palmetto for support and mosses and lichen grow along the stem if it has not recently burned.