Foreign Plants?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 34

Foreign Plants?

PHOENIX PALMS PRODUCED IN BRITISH GROUP OF PACIFIC ISLANDS

LINKED WITH NEW ZEALAND Even if Phoenix palms, now to be planted with native trees leading to the War Memorial Museum, are not New Zealand flora, they are near to it. THE suspicion among 1 the advocates for all-native planting at the Museum that the palms are Asiatic or American can be dispelled. For Phoenix palms come from Phoenix Islands, British possessions directly north of the New Zealand groups of Teijtelau and Samoa. The palms eVen grow in the Tokelau Islands, too. So the City Council, in deciding to plant Phoenix palms because of their appearance, is unwittingly paying a graceful tribute to Island Polynesians who fought side by side with New Zealanders in the Great War. Scribbled on walls in military camps in the Dominion to this day are the names of many of the Island soldiers. Phoenix Islanders have had as their most profitable industry the production of these palms. The Americans soon heard of them, and parks in Californian cities can boast of the presence of the palms. The Islanders call the palms ni’au, which makes an interesting link with New Zealand’s own palm, the nikau. The Polynesian navigators who arrived in Mew Zealand centuries ago, remembering the ni’au of their hpme islands, gave the nikau its name as the Maori form of a common word. The Island name for the coconut palm is a similar one.