Why Palms?

from The Palm Tree,
one of many colorful and somewhat fanciful palm pictures

One question that is often asked at our palm tree talks is: why palm trees? There are many answers - some practical and some romantic.

I found a little book from 1863 that had some very romantic pictures of palms and this one matched somewhat the South Gardens at the PPIE. Coincidence? Perhaps? But if you compare it to the picture below, you might wonder if one of the architects had this book on his or her desk.

From UC Davis

Frank Morton Todd wrote "...the Exposition fit its environment more successfully, perhaps,than any other ever built, for in a very general way it followed the art impulse of people that had lived in similar lands and some of whom had crossed seas and deserts to occupy this. It suggested Damascus and Stamboul, it was Oriental, south European, Mediterranean, Greek, Italian, and Spanish, as became an architectural group situated on the shores of an inland sea in a region with a climate like that of southern Spain, and skies like those through which the sheep of Polyphemus wandered." (Chapter LVII "A New Creative Harmony", p. 288)

References

• The Palm Tree, S. Moody, 1863 - She excuses herself for being palm crazy because she grew up in the West Indes: "Should it seem to any that her enthusiasm for the crowned tree has carried her at times too far, and made her over fanciful, she would plead in excuse that her birthplace was the " region of palms," and that her earliest recollection of the face of nature is of the sea-coast of a West Indian island fringed with Coco-nut Palms. That scene daguerreotyped by the glowing sun upon her infant brain, was revisited in older years, when she became acquainted with some of the most distinguished members of the royal race of palms.". She mentions that Dr. Berthold Seeman publised "Popular History of Palms" the year before, 1862
• A popular history of palms and their allies. By Berthold Seemann, Ph.D., 1856
• Ornamental Palms and Climbing Vines, chapter from Luther Burbank, His Methods and Discoveries and their Practical Application, 1915.