Olivier

I’ve been taking pictures of Phoenix Canariensis Palms in Rome since 2013, where the majority of these plants, some of them centuries-old, have died and still dying due to the red palm weevil.

“Adult females lay about 200 eggs at the base of young leaves or in wounds to the leaves and trunks… The cause of the high rate of spread of this pest is human intervention, by transporting infested young or adult date palms trees and offshoots from contaminated to uninfected areas. M. Ferry and S.Gòmez.”

The palm is completely devoured by the deposited larvas. The leaves fall down and the entire plant begins to collapse. Not only the fallen leaves or the trunks, stripped naked from their foliage, capture my attention, but it’s also the shape that the palm assumes on the terminal stage. As the highways, the squares, the front yards, the parks, the socio-economic environment, and our life change with time, as well the palm transforms its aspect and dies.