The transformation happened about eight hours after last call at 4 a.m., and about four hours before the bar reopened at 4 p.m. Mr. Greenberg, whose mantra is “retail is detail,” wanted precision — he had posted diagrams with a layout showing which trees belonged where, and the trees had been labeled with coat-check tags. The numbers on the tags were supposed to correspond to the numbers on the diagrams.  The problem was, some of the numbers had faded away in the Florida sun. But the tag on No. 15 was bright and legible. To the species-conscious, No. 15 is a Phoenix roebelenii. It has an alias: pygmy date palm. Mr. Greenberg discovered No. 15 at a shop at 28th Street and Avenue of the Americas that is owned by the onetime Marlboro Man, Chris King.  That was in April 2006, soon after 230 Fifth had opened. “When September came around, I said, ‘What do I do with these palms?’ ” Mr. Greenberg recalled.  He considered trying to park them for the winter with the home-industry merchants who lease showrooms at the building at 230 Fifth Avenue, known as the New York Market Center. “I was going to let each of them take care of a tree for the winter and reward them with a bottle of Champagne,” he said.  He had second thoughts about that idea after a conversation with Mr. King. “I said, ‘How much would you charge me to take the trees to Florida and bring them back?’ These trees typically retail for $500 or so. He said $250 each. I said, ‘That’s a bargain, I don’t have to buy them the next year.’ We numbered them, we sent them down to Florida and the next spring they came back.”  But the numbers had been removed, Mr. Greenberg said. That led to the current method of tying the numbered coat-check tags onto the trees with wire.  The trip to New York began on Thursday, when No. 15 and the other palms were loaded onto the truck at the farm in Homestead, Fla., south of Miami. Mr. King said the tractor-trailer arrived in Manhattan at 3 a.m. Sunday and stopped at his shop to drop off some other plants. Then the truck headed to 230 Fifth, where the palms were taken off the truck and lined up on the sidewalk on West 27th Street.  From there, No. 15 went on an elevator ride to the basement. Then two waiters, Juan Reyes and Pedro Sotarriba, did a push-and-drag maneuver to move it across the basement to another elevator, because the first one does not go to the 21st floor, where the bar is located, and the palms could not go into the building the way Mr. Greenberg’s customers do, through the front entrance.  No. 15 went into the second elevator and emerged onto the roof less than two minutes later. Two busboys, Tamding Norbu and Leksang Khuzor, carried it 120 feet to the place indicated on the diagram.  Its planter was waiting, and with the lounge’s manager, Kevin Stafford, they lifted it and dropped it into the planter.  It did not fit. Mr. King had apparently repotted it, Mr. Stafford said, and the new plastic pot was a fraction of an inch larger than the planter. Mr. Stafford said this was a job for Frank Montilla, the lounge’s engineer.  Mr. Montilla brought over a power saw and sliced off a seven-inch piece from the edge of the plastic pot. No. 15 dropped into the box. Then John Benedetti, the executive chef at 230 Fifth, tilted it, and Mr. Norbu slipped off the black band that had held the leaves in a bundle. They unfurled, and Mr. Norbu looked pleased.  “Done,” he said as he padded off to find No. 1, No. 51 and No. 54. “Looks great.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: A Snowbird’s Return, to a Lounge With a View. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
For a rooftop bar near Madison Square Park in Manhattan, the return of the palm trees is a springtime rite.