They usually grow where you are not, but would like to be. Sometimes, however, they are right under your nose – in front yards, pedestrian zones, greenhouses, or botanical gardens – where they inevitably raise the question: How did this fascinating plant become a plant of universal longing? In the beginning, one thing is certain, there was the date palm. With its cultivation, people settled down, using its palm fronds to cover roofs and worship gods. Since then, palm trees have cast their shadow over both dreams of the south and utopian visions of a better world: Goethe chose an Italian fan palm as his fetish, coconut guru August Engelhardt founded his palm tree religion in German New Guinea, while products such as Palmin began to lubricate Western prosperity. Palms were and are not only plants of longing, but also colonial plants, and in monocultural plantations they threaten the very dream of a paradisiacal nature for which they stand with enchanting, iconic elegance.
Jutta Person explores the wide-ranging relationship between humans and palm trees, from the desire to drop out of society to a fetish for dwarf palms, from tropical melancholy to greenhouse plants: this portrait celebrates the palm tree in all its sun-drenched and shady facets.
Non-fiction
Jutta Person was born in 1971 and works as a journalist in Berlin. She studied German, Italian, and philosophy in Cologne and Italy. She writes for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Literaturen, Die Zeit, and Philosophie Magazin. She is the author of two other portraits in the Naturkunden series: Donkeys (2013) and Corals (2019).
