Published in Florida Gardening, February 1999

Urban though Key West is, Peter Whelan’s garden in Old Town is not a basic city garden. No sunny decks. No flowering plumbago. No fragrant frangipani. Behind his six-foot high wooden fence, a towering jungle of rare and exotic palm trees deflects the hot tropical sun, and soothes the beast in anyone who’s lucky enough to gather beneath its canopy.

Grown from seeds gathered from all over the world, many of Peter’s palms look down on prissy, city-fied palms like fishtails (Caryota mitis) and sugar palms (Arenga pinnata) that merely add elegance to skylines, and decorate tamer gardens. Peter’s is a working garden where he procreates endangered species; a garden where even the palms have jobs: Some demonstrate the evolution of defense mechanisms developed over time for survival in the wild. Several are downright dangerous. For instance, the giant Corypha lecomptii bears petiole thorns akin to lions’ claws with puncture-perfect points, and Borassodendron machandonis’ petioles are each six feet of razor-like edges, sharp enough to shave the whiskers -- and then some -- off any monkey.

“I do what I can to save palms from extinction, but I’m also interested in appearance,” said Whelan. “My focus is simple, pinnate leaves and bizarre survivors from Cuba that have no petioles when they’re mature.”

Probably the world’s foremost authority on Copernicias, Whelan is particularly interested in Copernicia verspitilonium found only in the Oriente Province of Cuba, and in a hybrid of Copernicia rigida and Copernicia macroglossa called Copernicia longiglossa. It, too, is a bizarre survivor from Cuba.

“I’ve never seen longiglossa, just heard descriptions of it, and I’ve never seen a mature verspitilonium,” Whelan said, “but I’m planning a trip to Cuba soon.”

Of course, Whelan can get his own Cuban fix in his own garden: He has more than a dozen Copernicias growing there. A 25 year old macroglossa -- better known as the Cuban petticoat palm -- crowns one edge, which can be seen from the Angela Street side of the Key West cemetery: “It’s getting old enough to drop its petticoat, at which time the whole character of the palm changes from a bulbous shape to a skinny tree trunk holding a single, cone-shaped leaf about 30 feet high. The metamorphosis is grand.”

Although Cuban palms are Whelan’s love, he hasn’t limited his garden to these. In fact, on less than one acre, hundreds of varieties of palm trees thrive. A Licuala ramsayi here. An Astrocaryum mexicanum there. Palms from Australia, from Brazil, from China, most of which, have no common names. Indeed, until 1987, the Corypha lecomptii, a native of what is today, Vietnam, didn’t even have a name listed with the International Palm Society. Yet, Peter’s three lecomptii have been growing in his garden since 1978.

The rarest palm in the garden is a Bactris militaris. Whelan figures it’s the only one in the U.S., possibly the only one in existence from South America’s swamps because no one -- not even Whelan -- knows its pedigree. Key West Garden Club members couldn’t even find it listed in any of the books in their library.

Another unusual palm this side of the Pacific is the giant Coco-de-Mer, which can grow to heights exceeding 45 feet. This Seychelles native grows from the largest palm seed in the world, and after ten years, Whelan’s Coco-de-Mer has only one massive feathery leaf, standing eight feet tall.

Whelan thinks he has the only flowering Kentiopsis oliviformis in the United States. This tall, elegant palm from New Caledonia was in the Fairchild Tropical Garden collection in Miami, but in 1992, it went down with Hurricane Andrew.

Whelan speculates on where to go with the seeds and seedlings he’ll procreate in his garden nursery: “I’ll give some to my cousin, Nancy Forrester (Nancy’s Secret Garden), whose rainforest-like garden here in Key West doesn’t have one. And I’d like to give some to Fairchild’s; some to friends. But what to do with the seeds is an interesting question.”

In March, 1997, Peter’s tropical palm garden was one of five never-before-open-to-the-public gardens that the Key West Garden Club featured on its annual tour. More than 800 people used this opportunity to ogle a palm tree collection equal to none.

During the weekend tour, Whelan shared tidbits of information and little-known facts about some of the more exotic species. Take the Copernicia rigida: Whelan said botanists are toying with the possibility that these unusual palms are carniverous.

“Because of its steep, circular leaf with sharp spikes that funnel into its core, birds, mice and other small mammals get trapped there, and die,” said Whelan. “We think this is a method of self-fertilization that evolved after the last ice age when rigida grew in what was then, a dessert.”

Man-eating palms?

And you thought it was safe to walk the streets of Key West.

By Barbara Bowers, © 1997

Side Bar to Peter’s Tropical Palm Garden: The 1999 Garden Tour

Key West is a garden city; a closed gate town where everything from parties to politics shape up under a canopy of lush vegetation. Touring these private outdoor enclaves is like peeking into a living soul, heart and mind, and then, coming home with all their best kept secrets.

Five never-before-open-to-the-public gardens will be featured on Key West Garden Club’s March 13 and 14, 1999 Garden Tours

This is the eighth annual garden tour, but a growing demand for more information about the island’s flora sprouted the November 7, 1998 Trolley Tree Tour. This two hour, one day only, tour-about-town in one of Key West’s open-air trolleys focuses on everything tall from palm trees and fruit trees to kapoks and a champion Lignum vitae. The $10 tree tour is limited to 64 people. The March garden tour costs $15, and it can accommodate thousands.

By Barbara Bowers, © 1997

For "Key West Garden Club By The Sea" by Barbara Bowers, CLICK HERE