Unless affected by disease or pests, the Phoenix palm can live for 200 to 300 years.1 This means that even if the first plantings (late 1800s) in New Zealand were still growing they would still be relatively young. There is a strong chance that the oldest specimen would be in Auckland, not too far from the Arrowsmith farm in Mauku. There is no evidence in David’s discussion of his father’s photograph collection of any interest in gardening or horticulture, so the appearance in the Arrowsmith Collection of such a large number of Phoenix palms is, as noted, testament to their status as probably New Zealand’s most commonly planted exotic palm. Research in Auckland backs this up: Wilcox’s (2008) research on Auckland’s Remarkable Urban Forest shows that Phoenix palms were amongst the top 50 frequent tree species in a sample of 546 streets in Auckland, and were the fifth most abundant tree in a sample of 1561 home garden trees. We’ll return to events in Auckland regarding Phoenix palms, but for now the first task is the straightforward one of tracking what has happened, 63 years later, to the palms we saw in Part 1.
The best way to verify what has happened to a palm is to visit the site, and I have been able to do this with many of them. When this has not been possible Google Maps is remarkably useful: it is a feature of Phoenix palms that they are easily identifiable in a map view, and then the Google Street view can be used for confirmation. Once presence or absence is established the more difficult task for the latter is to establish what happened. This can often be reasonably well worked out using available resources, overall allowing a nice picture of the rise and fall of the Phoenix palm across over a century of New Zealand history.
Starting at Mauku: A consequence of development
The photographs and descriptions in the Arrowsmith resource make it possible to locate the general area of the Arrowsmith’s Mauku farmhouse. David finishes My Father’s Lens by returning to where he grew up, noting how neglected the farmhouse is, and saying ‘I feel a deep sadness … The farm is now sub-divided with a lifestyle block on the back paddocks’ (p, 103). Scouring this area via Google Maps there is no sign of a surviving Phoenix palm, so it looks very much like the palm was removed. It is not possible to know exactly why, but perhaps the neglect of the farmhouse and subdivision of the farm was involved.
The possibility that development was involved in the removal of Phoenix palms also seems to apply to the two very young specimens seen at the Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre. Scouring the area via Google Maps shows no sign of any Phoenix palms. The centre underwent significant development since Donald took his photograph in 1962, and it looks likely the palms disappeared sometime during such building-development work.
Travelling south to Whanganui a more clear-cut case of the consequences of development emerges. As noted in Part 1, the photo Donald took here in 1962 is a more well-framed ‘scenic’ one:
The planting of the two palms at either side of the courthouse building was noted in a 1928 issue of the Wanganui Chronicle as follows: ‘Phoenix canarianthus [sic] was planted in Moutoa Gardens yesterday. These plants, which come from the Canary Islands, were grown from seeds in the municipal nursery. A number have already been planted around the Art Gallery and at Virginia Lake and are in a flourishing state’.2 The planting as a pair, as seen in front of the Whanganui courthouse, was a common and admired landscape trope at the time, but the following photo shows what transpired 4 years later:
The 1966 photo shows the early stages of the construction of a new Whanganui courthouse building. At this stage the southern member of the Phoenix palm pair has been removed. By 1967 the northern-most Phoenix palm, initially left untouched, was also removed. Exactly why is unclear, but such are sometimes the consequences of development.
Returning closer to the Mauku beginning point it is worth looking at photo 87 again and then comparing it with an aerial photo from 1959:
Source: Aerial view of central Pukekohe, 1959. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections Footprints 03142.
The 1959 photo shows that there were in fact five Phoenix palms in front of Stan Andrews Ford Sales, reinforcing the claim that the palms were not the focus of Donald’s photography. But the more important question is, ‘what happened to them?’ We can use Google Maps Streetview to answer this:
Source: Google Maps Street View, Dec 2009
Clearly, by 2009 Stan Andrews Ford Sales has gone, replaced by a Kubota farm machinery yard, and we also see that there are now only two Phoenix palms remaining from the original five. If we keep using the wonderful resource of Google Maps we can track further changes:
Source: Google Maps Street View, Dec 2015
Six years later Kubota has been replaced by a Lone Star Restaurant, which involved building onto the original art deco Stan Andrews building. As we see, the remaining two Phoenix palms were removed, perhaps in the building extension work. One further street view is useful to show what featured in the new landscaping:
Source: Google Maps Street View, Aug 2018
The street trees are scarlet pin oaks, and there at the corner of the driveway are three nikau palms. More nikau palms can be found planted in groups further along Massey Avenue. The history of the renewed preference for native plants is a long story requiring several later blogposts, but this case shows what it can involve for exotics (NB: it is somewhat surprising to see scarlet pin oaks planted), and we will pick up the consequence of this for Phoenix palms in Part 3 of this blogpost. In the next instalment we’ll start with two cases of partial removal, and then look at where the palms remain, becoming what I call ‘monumental’ features. Then I’ll offer some concluding comments summarising the interesting rise and fall of the Phoenix palm in New Zealand.
- D. Spennemann, 2018, ‘Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) in Australia’, Palms, 62(4): 185-201. ↩︎
- ‘Untitled’, Wanganui Chronicle, 1 August 1928, p. 6. See the blogpost, The Colonnade Effect, for a discussion of the palms planted around Whanganui’s Sarjeant Art Gallery. ↩︎
The Local Arboretum: Noticeable trees and their stories 