Working in the Garden: Managing a postcolonial landscape

in the academic background

David Strauch Department of Geography University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa <strauch@hawaii.edu>

Roxanne M. Adams Buildings and Grounds Management

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 2525 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822

808.956.3611

Leaders in Biodiversity Conservation, Montréal 23-25 October 2014

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1908: Botanical collector, Hawai‘i Territorial Division of Forestry

1911: Botanist at College of Hawai‘i, in charge of the herbarium

1919: Professor of systematic botany

1955–1957: Botanized in Hawai‘i 1962: Awarded honorary PhD, while

professor of Oriental studies

Joseph F. Rock (1884–1962)

“Pohaku”

Rock planting H. giffardianus, 1 September 1940 Photo: L. W. Bryan; HI Archives portrait no. 28

Rock and Plants: The Vision of the Campus as a Botanical Garden

Visiting scholars who came to give lectures at UH, like Carl Sandberg, often planted a tree while they were here.

A Century’s Assemblage of Plants

King Prajadhipok of Siam planted Chaulmoogra (Hydnocarpus anthelmintica) in honor of Alice Ball for her work on Hansenʻs Disease using this this tree.

Botanists and horticulturalists added plants collected on their work in the Pacific and beyond; the golden variety of Delonix regia shown in the background was orinally collected at the Papeari Botanical Garden on Tahiti in 1975, by Horace Clay, whose name it now bears.

Arrival of plants in Hawai‘i

1010 109 108 107 106 105 104 103 102 10 1

1 billion BP 1 million BP 1 KYA 1788 1960 today

Cosmopolitan plants

Cultural Heritage plants

Native plants

0 1000 2000 3000 4000

Cosmopolitan plants

Cultural Heritage plants

Native plants

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air flotation ocean drift (rafting) ocean drift birds: sticky fruit/seeds birds: barbs/bristles birds: mud on feet birds: internal

by wind, wing, & wave

Native Species of the Hawaiian Islands

Difficulty of reaching the islands + Highly diversified habitats —> High percentages of endemic taxa

Native Hawaiian Plant Species Indigenous 106 11% Endemic 851 89% Total 957

Species evolving in the absence of browsers and predators tended to lose natural defenses.

Evolution of endemic species

Māmaki (Pipturus alba), a relative of nettles — with no sting!

Transported Landscapes

Hawaiian settlement brings about 25 plants and 5 vertebrate animals

Terrestrial mammals new to islands! — immediate impact on ecology

Landscapes restructured in places •  Polynesian arboriculture •  Cultivation of native grasses •  Increase in wetlands

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Herb Kāne, Ka‘anapali in Ancient Times

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Flows of energy change within the system

Energy remains a cycle

Production of space: Landscape is relational

Agroecology of pre-cosmopolitan Hawai‘i

Hawaiian Introduced “Canoe Plants”

Cocos nucifera niu / coconut

Musa spp. maiʻa / banana

Pandanus tectorius hala

Aleurites moluccana kukui

Artocarpus altilis ʻulu / breadfruit"

Broussonetia papyrifera wauke

Calophyllum inophyllum kamani

Cordia subcordata kou

Hibiscus tiliaceus hau

Morinda citrifolia noni

Syzygium malaccense ʻōhiʻa ʻai "

Thespesia populnea milo

About half of the canoe plants are trees (not counting bamboo)

ʻape" Alocasia macrorrhiza ʻohe / bamboo" Bambusa vulgaris

ʻohe / bamboo" Schizostachyum glaucifolium kalo / taro Colocasia esculenta kī / ti Cordyline fruticosa ʻolena / turmeric" Curcuma domestica uhi Dioscorea alata ko or sugarcane Saccharum officinarum

pia Tacca leontopetaloides ʻawapuhi " Zingiber zerumbet

ʻuala / sweetpotato " Ipomoea batatas ipu Lageneria siceraria ‘awa Piper methysticum

Herbs/Shrubs Trees

The Terrestrial Paradise

The Savage Wilds

Polynesian arboriculture was often invisible to early European explorers, who saw mixed treescapes as “natural”

Colonial Misunderstanding of Tropical Trees

High latitudes characterized by seasonal energy differentials — it gets cold!

Trees store energy, make it available in winter •  build ecological capital in living wood •  produce “interest” in fruits, nuts, & deadwood •  used by people for food, shelter & fuel

Trees as ecological energy banks

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Understanding the Temperate Context

European Expansion and the Liquidation of Ecological Capital

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And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze: He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas; She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her — strange! that honey Can't be got without hard money!

John Keats (1818) Robin Hood: to a Friend

Shipbuilding mines arboreal energy deforestation erodes rural livlihoods, drives peasants to become sailors (called England’s “heart of oak”)

Process creates ecological debt... to be paid by colonial appropriation

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Ships reproduce economic/ecological relationships

Injection of concentrated energy changes local structures of power puts new elites in debt...

...paid by liquidating forests

Energy now leaves the system as it will in sugarcane, etc.

Production of space: Landscape is extractive

Impacts of Cosmopolitan Macrofauna

Cows, goats, sheep, deer turned loose to graze (mining ecological capital!)

Leads to reforestation efforts, starting in Mānoa with the HSPA, connected to College of Hawai‘i

Devastate native plants & landscapes

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Impacts of Cosmopolitan Microfauna

Diseases devastate native birds in tandem with mosquitoes, pigs, & chickens — also imperilling co-evolved plants

Diseases devastate native Hawaiians •  Horrible population collapse •  Erodes social system which maintains landscape •  Shifts land tenure to extractive ecologies

Erosion of Native Ecologies

http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/birds/archives/2012/hawaiian-birds.aspx

Impacts of Cosmopolitan Settlement

Landscapes of production “Rationalized” with reduced biodiversity

Landscapes of consumption Marked out of production by big trees & lawns made of surplus capital from sugar & pineapple

Both landscapes alienate labor i.e. are no longer made for the people they’re made by

Division of Landscapes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliuokalani_Park_and_Gardens http://hawaii-agriculture.com/hawaiis-last-sugar-plantation-to-be-biofuel-lab-businessweek/

Impacts of Cosmopolitan Settlement

Ordered by visual aesthetic

The “landscape subject” is the viewer possessing through penetrative gaze

Consistent with grazing

Landscape Values

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Social Inheritance of Cosmopolitan Settlement

Policymakers minimize resources available (budget) Treat maintenance of landscape as unskilled, i.e. No horticultural background for groundskeepers

Workers resist perceived exploitation

Consequences for Landscape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

Sensitive plants require more care than we are budgeted to give them

The “Big Trees and Lawn” campus paradigm consistent with the estate aesthetic

The fetishization of natives use of natives as mere decoration (“anti-conquest” )

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes.

Challenges for Conservation

Plants Landscape Ethic

Native plants biocentric moral

Cultural Heritage plants relational political

Cosmopolitan plants aesthetic universalist

Values associated with plant groups

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Pokulakalaka (Munroidendron racemosum)

Conservation of Native Species

Maintaining Genetic Diversity of Endemic Plants

Conservation of Native Species

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Kalo (Colocasia esculenta)

High diversity of indigenous cultivars variable leaves, stems, corms, habits as many as 368-482 c. 1900 only 65-73 are still extant

About 60 are maintained at UH at Ka Papa Lo‘i o Kānewai (a traditional cultural garden)

Kawika Winter (2012) Kalo [Hawaiian Taro, Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott] Varieties: An assessment of nomenclatural synonymy and biodiversity. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 10:423-447 <www.ethnobotanyjournal.org/vol10/i1547-3465-10-423.pdf>

Maintaining Hawaiian Agrobiodiversity

Conservation of Cultural Heritage Species

Maintaining Genetic Diversity of Imperilled Plants

Endangered in its native Madagascar, this unusual poinciana was propagated by Richard Hamilton from scion wood collected by Mariannas Islands extension agent Charles Frear, (then also a UH horticulture grad student); seedlings segregate to gold and orange forms, propagated here by Richard Criley.

Conservation of Cosmopolitan Species

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Adding to the Joseph F. Rock Palm Collection

Grounds Supervisor Jameson Ramelb, with groundskeepers and volunteers, planting palms during Earth Month 2014

April 2014 accessions:

Ravenea rivularis* the Majestic Palm (Madagascar) Clinostigma samoense* Upolu Island, Western Sāmoa Dypsis cabadae the Philippine black palm Beccariophoenix alfredii* endemic to Madagascar

*on IUCN Red List

Conservation of Cosmopolitan Species

Campus map shows > 5000 plants Allows multiple kinds of queries Gives scientific and cultural info Provides links to other databases

Also a useful tool for analysis

Building constituency through education

http://manoa.hawaii.edu/landscaping/plantmap.html

Shifting the understanding of the landscape

Mahalo

1939

Today

http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/archives/univarch/centennial/50years.htm