The Island of the Colorblind

Bill brought this out, as we made our way through the dense vegetation: ‘Pohnpeians recognize and name about seven hundred different native plants, and, interestingly, these are the same seven hundred that a Western botanist would pick out as separate species.’ Of these, he said, about a hundred species were endemic – they had evolved on Pohnpei, and were unique to the island.[39] This was often stressed in the species names: thus there were Garcinia ponapensis, Clinostigma ponapensis, Freycinetia ponapensis, and Astronidium ponapense, as well as Ga-leolaponapensis, a native orchid.

Pohnpei’s sister island, Kosrae, is a very beautiful and geologically similar high volcanic island, little more than three hundred miles away. You might expect Kosrae to have much the same flora as Pohnpei, said Bill, and many species are of course common to both. But Kosrae has its own endemic plants, unique to it, like Pohnpei. Though both islands are young in geological terms – Pohnpei is perhaps five million years old and Kosrae, much steeper, only two million – their flora have already diverged quite widely. The same roles, the same eco-niches, are filled with different species. Darwin had been ‘struck with wonder,’ in the Galapagos, at the occurrence of unique yet analogous forms of life on contiguous islands; indeed this seemed to him, when he looked back on his voyage, the most central of all his observations, a clue to ‘that great fact – that mystery of mysteries – the first appearance of new beings on this earth.’

Bill pointed out a tree fern, Cyathea nigricans, with its massive trunk, twice my height, and a crown of long fronds overhead, some of them still unfurling in hairy croziers or fiddleheads. Another tree fern, Cyathea ponapeana, was now rather rare and grew only in the cloud forest, he added, but despite its name, it was not completely endemic, for it had also been found on Kosrae [Cyathea nigricans, similarly, had been found on both Pohnpei and Palau). The tree fern’s wood is prized for its strength, Joakim said, and used to build houses. Another giant fern, Angiopteris evecta, spread low to the ground, with twelve-foot fronds arching, tentlike, from its short stubby base; and there were bird’s-nest ferns four feet or more in diameter, clinging high up to the tops of trees – a sight which reminded me of the magical forests of Australia. ‘People take these bird’s-nest ferns from the forest,’ Valentine interjected, ‘and reattach them so they can grow, epiphytically, on pepper plants, sakau – the two of them together, tehlik and sakau, are a most prized gift.’

At the other extreme, Bill pointed out delicate club mosses sprouting on the base of a bird’s-nest fern – an epiphyte growing upon an epiphyte. These too, Joakim said, were traditional medicine (in my medical student days we used their spores, ly-copodium powder, on rubber gloves – though it was subsequently found to be an irritant and carcinogen). But the strangest, perhaps – Bill had to search hard to find one – was a most delicate, iridescent, bluish-green filmy fern, Trichomanes. ‘It is said to be fluorescent,’ he added. ‘It grows chiefly near the summit of the island, on the trunks of the moss-covered trees in the dwarf forest. The same name, didimwerek, is used for luminous fish.’[40]

Here is a native palm, Clinostigmaponapensis, Bill said – not so common here, but plentiful in the upland palm forests, where it is the dominant plant. Valentine told us the ancient story of how this palm, the kotop, had protected Pohnpei from invading warriors from Kosrae – seeing the hundreds of palms with their light-colored flowering stalks on the mountainside, the invaders had mistaken these for men’s skirts made from hibiscus bark. Thinking the island must be heavily defended, they withdrew. So the kotop saved Pohnpei, as the geese saved Rome.

Bill pointed out a dozen different trees used in making canoes. ‘This is the traditional one; the Pohnpeians call it dohng…but if lightness and size are desired, they use this one, sadak.’

The sadak tree he pointed out was more than a hundred feet high. There were many wonderful smells in the forest, from cinnamon trees with their aromatic bark, to native koahnpwil trees with their powerful, resinous sap – these were unique to the island and useful, Joakim said, for stopping menstrual bleeding or dysentery and also to kindle fires.