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Sitting
in ceremony Tavana, who directs education at the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) in Hawaii, had explained that this tradition is used throughout Polynesia to greet honored guests and to defuse tension before negotiations. Kava, a tea made from shredded bark of the Piper methysticum tree, numbs the mouth and calms the spirit. In his native Samoan, Tavana spoke with authority, his rich, sonorous voice rising above the sensuous rhythm of wind-rustled leaves. Amidst a river valley devoted to preserving the vanishing native plants of Polynesia, and Hawaii in particular, botanist Paul Cox, who directs the NTBG, translated with downcast eyes: "Voices have been heard in the depths of the underworld. We are glad that you are here. Please listen to the words that I speak."
Stand
together, or perish separately For thousands of years, the kava ritual, and the plants on which it depends, helped sustain the many Polynesian cultures on scraps of land in a vast stretch of Pacific Ocean. Our ceremony took place in Hawaii, in northern Polynesia, in a section of the tropical botanical garden devoted to plants Polynesian settlers had brought to Hawaii 20 centuries ago. Because the Polynesians depended on dozens of plants, their canoes carried seeds and seedlings as well as people, pigs and food for the journey. These plants included:
The Polynesians crossed thousands of miles of ocean without benefit of navigational instruments. These were epic feats of navigation, but had the Polynesians left their essential plants behind, they might have perished on Hawaii. Drastic
danger The ceremony was part of an effort to bridge a gap between desk-bound journalists, the reading public, and the fact that both tropical plants, and the cultures dependent upon them, are in grave danger. Consider:
Most of us had written about endangered and extinct species we'd never seen. Now, in Hawaii, we were seeing those plants up close and personal. We were getting a crash course in the complex interplay of native plants, cultures and habitat. We were examining the flip side of biodiversity -- the way Polynesians, Europeans and Asians had transformed Pacific islands like Hawaii from centers of biodiversity into capitals of extinction. Finally, we were seeing a botanical Noah's ark that included plants whose wild representatives numbered in single digits. Gardeners
of Eden Meanwhile, the kava ceremony is concluding. The gap between ourselves and our hosts now bridged, we were allowed to enter the taboo section separating us. The morning may have dawned clear and calm. But we knew that gathering storm clouds were poised to drown cultures, species and landscapes. Today, the last representative of a plant or animal could be dying somewhere on our great, disturbed Earth. |
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