Interview with Jawara Alleyne

Cayman Compass

Silver thatch: The palm that held Cayman together

Long before tourism or offshore finance, Cayman’s wealth was measured in coils of rope and the strength of the hands that made them.

Marcieann Hydes can still recall her grandmother Edwina Ebanks swinging her legs on her porch in West Bay and plaiting the fronds of the silver thatch palm.

“One day I asked grandma if she would give me some of the fronds.” She said to me, “Yes I will give you some of these strings, but you have to make something with them, because you don’t waste anything, not even time.”

For more than a century the endemic silver thatch palm (Coccothrinax proctorii) which is found nowhere else, was the quiet engine of island life. Its leaves roofed houses, its fibres bound sails, its rope was shipped to Jamaica and beyond.

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