Palms In The Carolina Landscape: An Historical Overview

When I recall traveling down to Fort Lauderdale back in the late 80's and early 90's for our annual winter romp from frigid Canada to tropical Southern Florida, I recall that I found narry a palm tree until one hit the Georgia-Florida border on I-95.  As if announcing that this was a truly unique land of eternal summers and palm trees even so far north near the rest of the country, palms suddenly exploded from the median.  Oh sure, Georgia nearby had a decent ground-cover of Saw Palmettos (Serenoa Repens) that emerged from the dense pinery around about Brunswick or so, but they had nothing on the veritable carpet of them that showed once one found high and dry ground past the St. Marys River.  One notable exception stood out, that being the Jelly Palm (Butia Capitata) which grew by two as a lovely frame to the entrance of a Fieldcrest towel outlet in Smithfield, North Carolina.  This was very, very much to the north of Florida, especially to the eyes of a child who liked to exaggerate distances.

This might, in fact, have been the occasion in which I started reading about trees, way back in either the second or third grade.  I was fortunate to have a mother who was wise to the concept of providing her offspring with as much book book book as possible, and no sooner did I turn to the palm pages in lovingly acquired Florida's Fabulous Trees than I found our friend the Jelly Palm, an import from exotic subtropical southern South America.  The block of text accompanying the delightful picture of the frosty-green fronds stated that the noble plant could be found as far north as Washington, D.C.  If this were so, and people liked palm trees so much, I wondered why I only ever saw the pair outside of towel land, and none more until far into the deepest reaches of Georgia.  Believe me, I looked!

Then this last year, when I made my way to a steamy South Carolina, I found palm after palm pop up starting with some lovely Jelly Palms planted beside a pool at a Days Inn off of I-26 exit 154 near Orangeburg, South Carolina.  Why yes, I do take botanical observation locations seriously!  Anyway, anywhere downstream from that location was awash in palms as part of the landscaping.  It seems that the last two decades have seen a flurry of palm planting as people are discovering the hardier species can take a few cold nights on an otherwise humid subtropical landscape.  Humorously enough, to the equal delight and chagrin of my traveling partner, I was worried that I had to stab very far south to see palms, either wild or cultivated, as common enough features in the landscape.  The truth was that they are EVERYWHERE in lowland South Carolina.  Again, I really do not recall this being the case back in my younger days, and believe me, I was every bit as botanically precise and insane back then as I am today.  This led me to question a few things, namely just how prevalent the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) was in older times.  Well, to start off with, the flag of South Carolina prominently features the lovely tree:

Thanks, Open Clipart!

This flag does not date back to Colonial times, but it does feature elements of one that does.  The blue field and crescent moon date from William Moultrie's original South Carolina military flag of 1775, a flag which flew over his fort to save Charleston from capture by the British.  Despite being in command of a tactically inferior force, Moultrie successfully defended the city from initial British assault.  He found that Cabbage Palm trunks are perhaps the most amusing and surprising military grade wood material known to exist on the planet.  Cannon fire from the British ships apparently bounced right off of the palm walls of his fortress, which is fairly believable considering as how the King's navy was unable to simply plow over the weaker Carolinian forces.  In 1861, when South Carolinians were getting ready to oust what they saw as Union invaders, the modern flag seen here was raised.  The Cabbage Palm, mighty defender of Charleston, was seen as a natural symbol of defiance against out-of-state invasion, and the newly-minted Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter declared themselves the heirs of the Colonial Carolinian defenders.

Like many state flags of the South, South Carolina held on to hers once Grant reminded them that their viewpoint was inappropriate, and in some cases, these flags are a sad reminder of the racism that belies a supposed continuing crusade for subsidiarity.  Don't get me wrong, I get the point of state's rights and all, I am a Canadian and therefore hold as sacred the intense power placed into the hands of individual provinces at the expense of anything not Ontari... er... you know what I mean.  Anyway, that is a post, indeed a blog and a lifetime of political and social upheaval unto itself.  Back to the point, this is one of those Southern Flags that can stand for something above and beyond what the flag makers intended, namely because it is cool enough to have an actual tree for a central figure.  Likewise, the intent of heroic defense symbolized in said tree has its greatest meaning invested in an older and far more morally-righteous rebellion.  In the north, they crowned an American Elm (Ulmus Americana) as Liberty Trees. and the economic symbol of American independence, used even on one of the first flags of the continental army, was the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).  Down here, in warm, lush South Carolina was the Cabbage Palm.  That's right, this country had trees for symbol before it had flag-dressed women or men, eagles, chopped-up snakes, or any other sort of symbol.

So if I don't remember seeing so many of them before the cold-hardy palm craze caught on, just how widely planted were they as a landscape feature for our Second-Born ancestors?  Did they tend to leave the small space trees alone when clearing their fields of otherwise broad pines and oaks?  Did they line their streets with them?  Art from the period does not really seem to show the city as being particularly gardened, at least not nearly to the extent that it is now.  Considering the relative sophistication and connections with Britain that the city did maintain in the Georgian era, one wonders why this would be the case.  Botany was extremely popular among the planters and merchants alike, and both got rich off of a thriving plant trade.  Perhaps palms did not get much press as most gardeners did not see them as being particularly hardy or useful in the place where most of the commerce was directed, rainy and cool England (unlike today where they have gained a bit of popularity).  The palms that did start catching on in Europe in Georgian times were mostly Old World palms, notably the dates and in particular the Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix Canariensis), which saw container planting use at Versailles.  I can't say I blame them, the thing is pretty freaking cool looking, and can even be trimmed into, well, a pineapple.  Down in our yard in Florida I wanted one really bad, at least as a kid who knew nothing about the difference between plants native and exotic.  I can see the appeal for people in an age when the world was still largely being discovered by everyone and the backyard took a backseat. 

Very few Georgian era depictions of Southern life bring palms into view, however.  Magnolias appear now and then, as do moss-draped oaks, but by and large paintings of the era, in fact those up until the 1860's, seem to be Colonial versions of the romantic natural visions of John Constable.  American landscape art in general seems to emulate the dreamy, sweeping romanticism he championed.  On the one hand, the concept of broad, vast frontier wilderness is celebrated, but on the other hand, art and gardens alike seemed to want to give homage as well back to manicured England, which in turn wanted to be more flowing and open like North America, and yes, I seem to really be opening a slew of topics at this point.  I end the post with a question as much as a summary of the concept of historical overview: how were palms envisioned and used by early Americans, and where have they come today?