Were there any trees left on Easter?

Not really. However, three species of native shrub have survived to the present day on Easter, at least two of which could have grown into trees if left alone. These species all survived in inaccessible areas such as cliffs and inside craters, although they (or their close relatives) grow more widely elsewhere in the Pacific.

Easter Island is famous for having been deforested by its Polynesian inhabitants, which led to an ecological and social collapse, so that when Europeans arrived, there were no trees left. Something similar happened on the French Polynesian island of Mangareva (see earlier posting).

I was intrigued to learn more about the lost plants of Easter Island when I visited the local headquarters of CONAF (Chile's Corporación Nacional Forestal), where a demonstration garden and nursery of native plants (and Polynesian crops) are maintained in manavai, stone-walled enclosures built by the ancient Easter Islanders to protect their crops from wind (which was presumably really bad after the island was deforested). (Easter Islanders also built stone chicken coops, or hare moa, in the absence of wood.) French Polynesian botanist Jean-François Butaud conducted extensive plant surveys on Easter Island a few years back and wrote an excellent brochure (available in Spanish) on the dozen or so remaining native plants, which are mostly ferns and things that grow on sea cliffs. The three native woody plants are:

Toromiro (Sophora toromiro, Fabaceae), endemic to Easter Island (but with congeneric relatives in Hawai'i, Mangareva, the Australs, and New Zealand). Now extinct in the wild. Somewhat famous in that Thor Heyderdahl collected seeds from them before the wild population went extinct.
Sapindus saponaria (Sapindaceae), native across the Pacific, including the Americas.
Mako'i (Thespesia populnea, Malvaceae; miro in Tahitian), found across the Pacific--some older authors consider it possibly introduced into the region, on account of its excellent hard wood which is still used in French Polynesia for carving. This beautiful tree can grow quite big if not cut down, and in French Polynesia and the Cooks tends to grow fairly near the ocean.


For a period of time, CONAF tried all sorts of exotic trees in an effort to reforest Easter Island. Many of the things they planted are horrible invasives elsewhere in the Pacific. The one thing that seems to have really taken off is Eucalyptus. As a result, parts of Easter look eerily like coastal Santa Cruz County around Davenport...