 Haupia
"Carl Brandauer" <brandy@icolorado.edu> wrote in message
news:1175978706-sch@news.lava.net...
>
> Sherwin Carlquist in "Hawaii A Natural History" wrote 'We do not know
> for
> certain, but there is a strong possibility that cocnut palms did not
> exist
> in the Hawaiian iskands before the Polynesians brought them.'
>
> He talks about many other plants as well, eyesight problems make it
> too
> difficult for me to read let alone write about then now.
>
> Cheers - Carl
>
I just happen to have that same book right here! It was the textbook
for a Hawaiian Natural History course that I took eons ago at UH, taught
by a "Dream Team" of Hawaii zoologists and botanists, such as Allison
Kay, Charles Lamoureux, Sheila Conant, Alan Ziegler, and even Harold St.
John, who was well into his 90s when I took the course (still driving
too, although he almost broadsided me once when he suddenly pulled into
traffic on East Manoa Rd).
In that same chapter that you quoted, Carlquist mentions that the
prevailing equatorial currents in the Northern and Southern hemispheres
both flow westward (Northern current clockwise, Southern
counter-clockwise due to the rotation of the earth) and between them the
eastward flowing counter current, make it difficult for a floating or
rafting plant of southern-hemispheric origin to cross 3 currents to land
on a Hawaiian shore. He notes the absence of many common S. Pacific
shore plants from Hawaiian beaches as additional evidence of the
difficulty that such drifting flora might have in reaching Hawaii. He
ends the paragraph with the above quoted sentence expressing some doubt
that coconuts preceded the Polynesians. Yet earlier in the chapter he
paradoxically speculates that a dryland plant like the koa, "whose
closest relative is not in the Pacific at all, but is Acacia
heterophylla of Mauritius...probably floated from Australia by some rare
chance." He goes on to say that "the wiliwili might be another
example - the only relative in the Pacific is located on Tahiti,
although one would expect a tree readily carried by seawater would
become established on many Pacific islands."
I agree with Carlquist that "we do not know for certain". But I'd
certainly put all my money on the seaworthy coconut before the koa,
wiliwili, hala or any other floating S. Pacific plant to able to survive
months drifting at sea to land and then flourish in Hawaii. |