Paurotis palm (Acoelorrhaphe wrightii), ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata), and coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) from agricultural zones 8 and 9 transplanted to zones 5 | 60 x 50 x 22 ft. (18.3 m x 15.2 m x 670.6 cm) at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY for the exhibition Indicators: Artists on Climate Change curated by Nora Lawrence.
To create Along the Lines of Displacement: A Tropical Food Forest, tropical fruit trees - coconut palms, a ponytail palm, and others - were brought from Florida to Storm King Art Center and installed as a living sculpture on Storm King’s proposal for a future that is predicted by the turn of the next century, where a temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) is projected to be the baseline in many places around the world. This assisted plant migration project presents something unfamiliar and unexpected in a particular environment. Assisted plant migration is something that the National Forest Service is studying with a range of plants, from ginkgoes and metasequoia to prairie grasses. The Forest Service looks backward at the fossil record to see what plant species inhabited a place millions of years ago, and for how long.
