Palm poet; A Pulitzer winner's second love: raising these beloved but threatened natives

American Forests, Wntr, 2005 by Margaret A. Haapoja

Driving into William Merwin's Maui palm preserve is like entering another world. Here, a few miles from Kahalui's international airport and the crowded streets of Paia, there is only bird song and the musky scent of jungle foliage. Fan-shaped leaves of Pritchardias and foxtail fronds of Wodyetia bifurcata drip after a rain shower. Sunlight barely penetrate the dense canopy, and paths are carpeted with leaves. It is a fitting refuge for a Pulitzer prize-winning poet who devotes mornings to writing and afternoons to tending his palm garden.

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Merwin and his wife Paula moved to Maui 27 years ago and purchased 18 acres in Haiku. "I had a naive early dream of restoring Hawaiian rainforest," he says. "I've learned the hard way that you can't do that when there's been this amount of disturbance to the land and when Hawaiian plants have evolved in such a specific way that when you try to put things back where they used to grow, they won't grow there any more."

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His early attempts to nurture Hawaiian natives like koa, ohia lehua, and lama trees were disappointing. When he realized that extinction threatened many of the world's palms, he decided to concentrate on the tree Linnaeus once labeled Principes for "prince of the plant kingdom."

"To put palms into perspective, they are the third most important plant group to humankind after the grasses and legumes," says Dr. Melany Chapin, palm biologist and research science associate to Hawaii's Bishop Museum. "yet they're the most threatened."

There are many reasons why. Seeds are hard to store. The trees are losing habitat in tropical regions. Some have specialized needs. They're popular in both indoor and outdoor landscaping. And palms, considered the tree of life to many indigeous people, are used for oils, food, medicine, construction and weaving materials, and rattan, among other things.

Indigenous to every continent except Antarctica, palms grow in arid deserts and brackish or fresh water swamps, in dry mountainous regions and tropical rain forests. Of the world's 2,700 palm species, about 224 are highly threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, including 15 of Hawaii's 23 native Pritchardia species.

"I've planted 820 different palm species," Merwin says, "and I don't know how many have survived, but there are probably thousands of palms on the property now." Over the years he's exchanged seeds with nurseries, botanical gardens, and other collectors.

Merwin's collection includes palms from Tuomoto, Samoa, and other South Pacific islands; Mauritius and Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean; Mexico; Cuba; the Amazon Basin; Australia; Malaysia; Vietnam; and Florida. "I've got palms in the garden here of which there are only one or two left in the wild," he says.

"William Merwin's collection of Pritchardias is an extraordinary gene pool representing these endangered species," Chapin says. "And when someone is as knowledgeable as he is, his work is valuable to science, education, and conservation. His entire collection is important because it could be the source of 'repatriation' or returning these palms to the wild."

In his little corner of paradise, William Merwin is doing his part to preserve as many palms as possible. "... The idea of a pristine environment is wildly exaggerated. There is practically no place in Hawaii that has not been, to some degree, invaded by alien species," Merwin says. "I think we've reached a terrible point where there is nowhere that things are safe from Homo sapiens. The etymology of the word garden was a little enclosed place that kept the wilds out, but now it's a little enclosed place that keeps the wild in."

Story and photo by Margaret A. Haapoja

Margaret Haapoja last wrote for American Forests on sustainable tree farms.