To Palm Studies

Recent History of the Praha Palmettos

by Bob Harms  email-here

The lone tall palm at Praha standing alongside the parsonage represents only one possible source for the local population that now ranges from seedlings to tall mature palms. There were four original palms and it is not known whether they were all the same species. My linguistics assistant Alena Horn, herself a Texas Czech, interviewed the current priest in 2004, and was told that:

There used to be four palm trees in front of the parsonage, but a former priest thought they were too noisy and messy, so he cut three of them down and burned them (the parishioners asked him to keep one). He is fairly certain that the book on the history of the church doesn't contain any information about the palm trees.
Alena also contacted Mrs. Stazy Hajek, a 91-year-old parishioner (in 2004) and Praha native, who related that:
She remembers the palm tree as always having been there, and she thinks that other nearby palms come from the seed of the old one. She is not sure who planted the original four in front of the rectory since this occurred before her time, but it sounds likely that her grandfather, an owner of a local nursery, and a plant–loving priest probably were behind it. She said that she knows of this priest being "flower–loving," that her grandfather had a relatively large nursery and that he helped in the maintenance of the church. If Mrs. Hajek's grandfather did plant the palm trees, it is likely that he would have ordered seeds from catalogs for a lot of his plants. She has an older book on church history that came out in 1939 (the church's centennial), and although she doesn't remember it mentioning the palm trees, it would certainly have more information on the flower-loving priest.
[If the grandfather of a woman born in 1913 planted the palms, I would assume they are well over 100 years old, and were present when the church was built in the 1890s. If the centennial was in 1939, that would put the founding of the church in 1839! But the Handbook of Texas Online indicates that Czechs first came to Praha in the 1850s. It was called Mulberry at that time. 1939 could be some other anniversary (80th or other Texas Czech event) or she remembered the year wrong.]

The Source of the Original Palms — an Onderdonk Connection?

There was, in fact, a Texas nursery catalogue that very well could have offered native palms for sale at the time suggested for the Praha palms. Pioneer nurseryman Gilbert Onderdonk established his nursery in Mission Valley, Texas, around 1858 and published his first catalogue in 1872. The Handbook of Texas Online notes that:
Onderdonk's reputation as a fruit grower increased as he collected and raised specimens of fruits and flowers and furnished the area between the Rio Grande and New Orleans with acclimated fruit trees and shrubs.
Praha is less than a mile south of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the main link between southern Texas and New Orleans at Onderdonk's time.

It is clear from Onderdonk's notes and the surviving 1888 catalogue [Cf. Evelyn Oppenheimer, Gilbert Onderdonk the nurseryman of Mission Valley, pioneer horticulturist (1991)] that he

As for selling palms, from Lockett & Read 1990 we find that Onderdonk did travel about Texas selling palms from a cart.
Historian [Brownson] Malsch's notes indicate that in 1925 Mrs. Alexander Lowe told him that in 1875 her husband bought two small palms from a wagon lot that pioneer nurseryman Gilbert Onderdonk brought from Jackson County for sale in Victoria.

The Praha Church and its Palm Paintings

The Czech Heritage Society of Texas (Bexar County Chapter) web page gives the following history of the church:
The first Czech, Matthew Novak, settled in the area about 1855 and other immigrants followed. In 1858, the Czech settlers changed the name of the settlement to Praha in honor of Prague, the capital of their homeland. A small chapel was built in 1865 for their church services. As the population increased, a new frame church was built in 1868 and dedicated to Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The foundation for the present large stone St. Mary's Church was laid in 1891 and was completed in 1895.

Flury's Sabal leaves on
the ceiling of St. Mary's church.

Contrast traditional (not Flury's) pinnate
church art palm leaves.

The Swiss artist Godfrey Flury was commissioned to paint murals and frescos for the interior of the church, and, interestingly, these include costapalmate leaves that appear to be from large Sabal palms — not the more typical pinnate leaves used in religious art. (The above image was extracted and enhanced from the KLRU Painted Churches of Texas site.) The Handbook of Texas Online has an article on him, but doesn't mention his palm leaves:

In 1895 he was commissioned to paint the interior of St. Mary's Church of Praha, a work that proved to be the most important of his career... The ceiling he divided into panels ornamented with painted vines, flowers, curving gold scrolls, and symbols such as a chalice, a star, and an eye within a radiant triangle... in 1929 he spent the remainder of his years traveling, dabbling in real estate, and painting scenic views of the Hill Country and wildflowers ... [emphasis mine]
The mention of Flury's interest in Texas flora gives added credence to the view that the palm leaves in his paintings were modeled after Praha palmettos.


Position of tall palm (red) on the church hill.
[Parsonage (P), Church (yellow), with entrance at E.]

The placement of the tall palm doesn't really seem appropriate for the current location of St. Mary's church, and also not a likely place for a wild palm — on a hilltop. So I suspect that at least the one remaining tall palm was already in place at the time the new church was built; and that it (and possibly the other original palms) served as Flury's model. It was probably better positioned in relation to one of the earlier chapels.

If these palms were already tall trees in 1895, we can further suspect that they were not grown from seed.