If you want to get some really rare palms for your garden, be sure to attend the annual get-together of the Hawaii Island Palm Society.
If you want to get some really rare palms for your garden, be sure to attend the annual get-together of the Hawaii Island Palm Society.
You will have the opportunity to connect with folks committed to growing and sharing rare palms from all around the world.
Friday (Jan. 27) is the reservation deadline for the society’s annual rare palm auctions, barbecue dinner and membership meeting at Aunty Sally’s Luau Hale in Hilo. The event begins at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3.
Always festive, this year HIPS is adding the marimba musical ensemble Kunzwanana to entertain and The Nature Conservancy will give a presentation about its efforts to protect and propagate the native Pritchardia, or loulu, palms on Hawaii Island. A barbecue dinner will be served between extensive silent and lively rare palm auctions.
Organizers invite the community to this great opportunity to socialize with other palm enthusiasts and obtain new palms for your garden.
The cost is $16 for members and $18 for non-members. No tickets will be sold at the event.
Anyone can become a member of the palm society for $15 a year. For more information, call Bob Gibbens at 333-5626 or visit the society’s website at www.hawaiiislandpalmsociety.com.
The Hawaii Island Palm Society is made up of people who simply love palms and strive to promote their use in private gardens and general landscape. As an affiliate of the International Palm Society, it is the society’s goal to perpetuate rare and endangered palms worldwide through the sharing of seed and plants.
The volunteer organization is celebrating its 43rd anniversary this year and continues to prosper, with more than 280 memberships. Tours of private palm gardens each summer are one of the highlights on the club’s annual calendar.
HIPS also is involved in the planning, planting and maintaining of the palm tree collection at the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens in Hilo. In 2016, the society added new signage to identify more than 100 species of palms at the zoo.
•••
There are at least 24 species of the genus Pritchardia found endemic to our islands. At one time there might have been many more species, but the introduction of Polynesian rats and pigs almost 2,000 years ago reduced the vast palm forests to a few sparse remnants in isolated locations.
These animals eat the seeds before seedlings have a chance to grow. Today, it is important for residents to grow these palms in their gardens before they become extinct.
Hundreds of species of palms are threatened with extinction world wide because of habitat destruction. Now, we can be part of the solution to save them through propagating and growing rare palms here.
Thus Hawaii can become a Noah’s Arc for a fascinating group of beautiful trees that are representative of the tropical and subtropical world.