When the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh revealed in 2021 that it would need to chop down the city’s oldest tree, there was outcry among residents — not least due to its endangered status around the world.
Botanists were reassured, however, that specimens had been propagated to help the global conservation project. The monumental Sabal palm, they were told, would live on.
But then, with the chainsaw hovering, there was a revelation. It was decided that the revered palm, which had drawn people to the glasshouse for nearly 230 years, was not endangered and was actually “common as muck”.
Karine Polwart, once an artist-in-residence at the Botanics, made her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Windblown
COLIN HATTERSLEY
The fabled tree was not the endangered Sabal bermudana, a botanist concluded, and was instead the prospering Sabal mexicana.
The discovery of the palm’s true identity after two centuries is revealed in a five-star show at the Edinburgh Fringe created by Karine Polwart. Windblown charts the tree’s growth and idolisation under the care of the Royal Botanic Garden.
Polwart, a singer-songwriter who has been an artist-in-residence at the Botanics, builds the tree up during her set as the endangered Sabal bermudana, or Bermuda palmetto. It was placed on the IUCN Red List of threatened species with Endangered status in 2016.
And then, Polwart told audiences at the Queen’s Hall during the now-finished run of her show, a botanist became suspicious about the shape of the palm’s seeds.
Axel Dalberg Poulsen getting the measure of the palm at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
ALAN SIMPSON
Instead of being one of the few Bermuda palmettos, it was, Polwart said, “Common as muck.”
Dr Axel Dalberg Poulsen, a tropical botanist, says in a video on the Royal Botanic Garden website that he recognised the mistaken identity as parts of the palm were being selected to put into its Herbarium for conservation and research purposes.
The 60ft-high palm had been deemed too large to transfer along with other plants from the Tropical Palm House which was to be renovated as part of its Biome Project.
“The interesting part of my job was to check the identification,” Poulsen said, adding: “For 200 years, this plant has been called Sabal bermudana, but when I checked all the more recent literature, actually it turns out to be Sabal mexicana.”
The self-pollinating palm had arrived by ship in Edinburgh from Bermuda via Germany in the 1790s and was transported to the current site in the 1820s.
The palm, housed within the greenhouse of the botanic garden in 1874, was shipped to the country in the 1790s
Before the five-day run of her show at the festival, Polwart said that there had been “tremendous sadness” among garden staff at the confirmation the palm would need to be chopped down rather than transplanted.
She told The Scotsman that the “palm mattered to the people there”. One of the horticulturalists “talked about it as a quiet, sentient presence … he said it was like being in a room with an elephant”, she added.
Simon Allan, the horticulturalist who looked after the palm, said at the time of its demise that it was a sad moment. While the 200-year-old tree was in decline, it could have lived for another 30 years, he said.
He said at the time that there was nothing in the gardens with more “historical and sentimental value”.
And while it is now not the rare, endangered Bermuda palmetto there is still a significance to the late Sabal mexicana.
At the time it was first put on display in the 1790s the Sabal mexicana would still not be described to science for another 40 years.