Steve Braunias: The rise and fall of the Phoenix palm

Phoenix palms. The emblem of Auckland we love to hate.

OPINION

Phoenix palms! One of the great symbols of Auckland, with their abundance, their grandeur, the way they speak to the sub-tropics and the good life and warm weather - they are lustrous explosions of frond, forever caught in a tropical breeze blowing off a blue lagoon. They make Auckland look like an island. They bring the sea with them. They bring sunsets, happiness, romance. Everybody hates Phoenix palms.

Phoenix palms! I hate them. There are six of them on my estate, and they are death traps, with their spikes and their toxins and their aggression. Report, Pest Free Kaipātiki Restoration Society: “Phoenix palm have sharp spines that easily penetrate skin and often snap off, working their way deep into tissues in under 24 hours. They may also carry a toxin. They definitely cause pain and can cause infection - often requiring surgery for complete removal ... PPE gear, extremely thick gloves and eye protection should be used when working with Phoenix palms.”

Phoenix palms! I have one in my arm. I will wear it for the rest of my days. Sans PPE gear, sans extremely thick gloves, and sans fear or horse sense, I ventured into the thick jungles of my estate a week before Easter and chopped back a Phoenix palm to allow more light to fall on my potato patch. For such a tough old brute, its branches are easily sawed off. But a spine broke off in my arm, seemed to burrow itself deeper and deeper over the next few days – I guess it liked me – and my arm swelled up and a surgeon cut me open but couldn’t find it and an ultrasound couldn’t detect it, just the long track that it made, and so the best advice is to leave it there and go through life as semi-human, part-Phoenix palm.

Phoenix palms! They make up an estimated half of all hand surgeries in Auckland. There are horror stories; the worst, I think, was published in the Herald, in 2000, with this flat and emphatic headline: “Phoenix palm needle ruins caretaker’s life.” The story made for sad reading. “Mike Manton has good reason to hate Phoenix palms. A spike from one pierced his right thigh and snapped off a year ago while he was loading fallen palm branches on to a trailer at the Vaughan Homestead in Long Bay Regional Park, where he was the caretaker. Five operations later, Mr Manton, aged 58, still uses a walking stick, takes Prozac for depression, and has had to leave the part-time caretaker’s job and his post as a volunteer firefighter.” He had been a fireman in Wairoa, Putaruru, Cambridge and Te Awamutu before moving to Auckland. Manton died in 2013. He was farewelled with a firefighters’ guard of honour when his casket was carried to the chapel. He survived fire but was brought low by a Phoenix palm.

Phoenix palms! A guy on Trade Me is offering a mature tree for $10,000 (“buyer must pick up”) from his estate in Cambridge. It won’t find a buyer in Auckland, where the trees are classified as pests; the law prohibits breeding, selling, or planting. Good. They are vicious, they attract rats, they suck up the water table. We are living in a time of war on Phoenix palms. In 2020, Matamata chopped down the 19 palms lining the street on Tamihana St for 70 years; that same year, someone deliberately poisoned and killed eight palms in front of Mansion House on Kawau Island; in July last year, Pest Free Kaipātiki Restoration Society celebrated its first round of Phoenix palm removal on the North Shore. They are on the way out. No more Phoenix palms.

Phoenix palms! They’re a part of me, a part of Auckland. Stocky, all jagged edges, able to survive frosts (the Otago Daily Times has

reported the existence of a Phoenix palm in Roxburgh), they are standing their ground, and continue to look majestic, triumphant, a mad flower of the tropics. They first came here 100 years ago, to beautify Raglan; the 19 Phoenix palms on Bow St remain in place, as do the palms planted in 1929 outside the Auckland Museum. They bring sunshine. They also bring misery, tenosynovitis (inflammation of tendons), ACC forms and worse; and yet I send this as a love letter to the Canary Island date palm, Phoenix canariensis, known and adored these past 100 years as the Phoenix palm.