On September 28, 1935 the Sydney Morning Herald, published an article by Walter Froggatt entitled - Beauty of Palms. The Fan or Cabbage Palm. The interesting article is transcribed below and you can read it on Trove, here.
The author Walter Wilson Froggatt (1858-1937), an entomologist was born in Melbourne. In 1880, he moved to the Mount Brown goldfield near Milparinka, New South Wales, where he collected specimens and then to the Flinders River, Queensland, where he sent specimens back to Sir Ferdinand von Mueller (1), the director of the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. Froggatt was appointed special zoological collector and assistant zoologist, and later taxidermist, to the New Guinea expedition organized by the New South Wales branch of the (Royal) Geographical Society of Australasia. Later he worked in Queensland and in the Kimberleys in Western Australia. In 1891, he was a foundation member of Naturalists' Society of New South Wales, and served as President for eleven years; he was a council-member from 1910 of the (Royal) Zoological Society of New South Wales, which elected him a fellow in 1931, and a founder of the Australian Wattle League, the Gould League of Bird Lovers of New South Wales and the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia and a member of the Australian National Research Council in 1921 until 1932. Walter was a prolific writer and in 1907 wrote Australian Insects the first general textbook on Australian entomology. He was also an outspoken critic of the introduction of cane toads into Australia, and the Froggatt Award, awarded by the Invasive Species Council, is named in his honour. He died in 1937 in Croydon, in New South Wales. (2)
Beauty of Palms. The Fan or Cabbage Palm. By Walter W. Froggatt.
Nearly every group of palms has a decorative beauty of its own. It is somewhat remarkable that our landscape gardeners have not used more varieties in the beautification of our parks. The only palm to come into prominence in the suburbs of Sydney during the last twenty years is the Wild Date palm, Phoenix canariensis, a native of the Canary Islands. It has a bizarre beauty of its own; but, in the writer's opinion, it is a very unsuitable species for the adornment of our streets, or to have planted in avenues across our parks.
The most decorative palms are those with slender, graceful stems, and these should be planted in groups of five or seven, upon a hillside, or in a park well away from other trees. Among the most decorative are those popularly known as fan palms, on account of their fanlike foliage. One genus, Livistona, was created by Robert Brown (3) for an Australian species.
When forming a genus, many botanists commemorate the names of their friends, or of distinguished scientists. Brown named this genus after his friend, Patrick Murray, Baron de Livistine (4), a well-known horticulturist, who in his garden near Edinburgh had gathered together with 1000 trees and plants, and had enriched the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens with many rare specimens.
The members of this genus Livistona are found in northern Assam, southern China, the Malay Archipelago, New Guinea, and Australia. They are a distinctive group, palms with very tall, slender stems, and crowned with fan-shaped fronds; and each frond has a long stalk beset with powerful recurved spines. The handsome flower spathes spring out from among the base of the leaf stalks; each dainty flower has a three-cut calyx and a three-petalled corella. The round, dry fruit contains a single seed, and it is said to retain its vitality for a much longer period than those of other palms.
In Assam and China, the fronds of the Toko pot-palm. Livistona jenkinsiana, are used in the manufacture of the large umbrella shaped hats worn by the Chinese coolies working in the fields. They are also used for thatching the native houses. The round-leaf palm, Livistona rotundifolia, is a native of the Celebes Islands. Wallace (5), in that wonderful book, "The Malay Archipelago," says: "This palm tree is the most beautiful fanleaf I have ever seen, with a slender stem not more than ten inches in diameter raising its crown of fronds a hundred feet up in the edge of the tropical forest."
Lane-Poole (6) describes a handsome Livistona found in New Guinea, with a slender stem fifty feet in height and six inches in diameter, and a graceful crown of fan-shaped leaves on stalks nearly eight feet in length.
Livistona Australis This fine fan-palm was better known to the colonists of New South Wales as the cabbage palm, because where vegetables were scarce they cut the palms down and made use of the unexpanded leaves in the centre of the crown by boiling it as a substitute for cabbage. Then, some enterprising settler conceived the idea of using the young foliage instead of straw for making hats. He may have seen the soft-plaited Panama hats of South America. The leaves were first boiled and then allowed to dry; then the pliable leaflets were split up and plaited into the low-crowned stiff "cabbage-tree" hats.
Cabbage tree hat with silk puggaree, c. 1860.
This hat was worn by Marcus Clarke, journalist and novelist, after his arrival in Melbourne in 1863.
This palm has a wonderful range, and it was aptly named "australis," for it grows as far south as Orbost, eastern Gippsland, Victoria, and ranges along the eastern coast of New South Wales and Queensland. The fan-palm round the Gulf of Carpentaria is now considered to be the same species.
Allan Cunningham
(7) took seeds to England, a specimen was growing in the Royal Gardens at Kew in 1824, and its flowers were figured in the Botanical Magazine. It is said to have grown so tall that it was too big for the palm-house, and had to be removed. Specimens 100 feet in height are common; and there are records of this fan-palm attaining a height of 120 feet, with the stem not much over a foot in diameter
Livistona MariaeThis unique palm was discovered by Ernest Giles
(8) and his exploring party when, in 1872, they were following up the source of the Finke River through the Krichauft Ranges. They entered a rugged gorge, which led into a beautiful valley dotted over with cypress pines and slender tall palms. It was a remarkable find-a desert-loving plant in the heart of Australia; and Ernest Giles named the valley "The Valley of Palms." This palm has a very limited range - down the valley, and thence spreading into some of the surrounding gullies through the range. It would be easy to count all the existing specimens of the Desert Palm. The valley was visited by the members of the Horn Exploring Expedition
(9) in Central Australia in 1894, and the Valley of the Palms is described in the
Botany of the Horn Expedition by Professor Tate
(10), as follows: "The principal colony of this stately palm, which attains a height of 90 feet, is in Palm Creek, which joins the Finke River at about nine miles south of Hermannsburg. The trees, rooting in the joints of the bare sandstone floor of the creek bed, extend for a length of about two miles from its junction with the Glen of Palms; altogether there cannot be more than about 100 full-grown individuals."
Giles sent all his specimens to Baron von Mueller for identification and description; the Baron pronounced this a new palm. Giles, in this expedition, had named a mountain range "Alfred Range," in honour of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (11); and this suggested the name of the Princess Maria of Russia (12) to the baron, so he named this palm Livistona mariae in her honour.
Some time ago a friend received a package of seeds of this palm from the mission station at Hermannsburg, and he gave me a dozen of them to see whether I could germinate them, but up to date they have given no sign of germination. This palm has been grown in the Botanic Gardens at Rockhampton, Queensland.
A copse of central Australian cabbage palms (Livistona mariae),
Palm Valley, Northern Territory, ca. 1946.
Image: National Library of Australia PIC/14192/177 LOC Album 1151
Livistona AlfrediThis fine palm was discovered some years later, in the valley of the Fortescue River and its tributaries, from the source of the Robe River and Caves Creek, North-west Australia. At first it was considered that it was the same species as Livistona mariae, but Mueller, when he had examined the specimen, pointed out that seeds, leaves, and flowers differed from that species. After listing it in his official report on the plants of North-west Australia, printed by the Western Australian Government, he described and named this palm in the pages of the Victorian Naturalist, 1892.
In giving it the specific name of "alfredi," to honour of the Duke of Edinburgh, he says: "At whose nuptial festivities the fan palm became dedicated to the Princess Maria of Russia." So, we have now two Australian fan palms, separated from each other by 800 miles of sunbaked land, uniting in name the Royal lovers.
Footnotes(1) Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller (1825–1896) - Australian Dictionary of Biography entry -
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mueller-sir-ferdinand-jakob-heinrich-von-4266(2) Walter Wilson Froggatt (1858-1937) - Australian Dictionary of Biography entry -
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/froggatt-walter-wilson-6251; Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation entry -
https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P001050b.htm ; and
(3) Robert Brown (1773–1858), author of Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van-Diemen and who accompanied Matthew Flinders and his journey on the Investigator. Australian Dictionary of Biography entry -
(4) Patrick Murray, Baron de Livistine (?-1661) Can't really confirm any information about him, possibly he was the second Earl Elibank of Livingston in Scotland - but there are inconsistencies with his death date all over the internet and Ancestry.
(6) Charles Edward Lane-Poole (1885-1970). Australian Dictionary of Biography entry -
(7) Allan Cunningham (1791-1839) - colleague of Robert Brown.
(11) and (12) Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (1844-1900), second son of Queen Victoria. In 1866.He married Grand Duchess Marie (1853 - 1920, called Princess Maria of Russia in the article). She was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia (1818-1881) Source: The Golden Age of Royalty: Photography from 1858-1930 by Trevor Hall (Coombe Books 1981)
(12) See footnote 11
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