How Glen's Oliver palm discovery in central Australia is now a hit in California

Australia Broadcast Center

05-05-2025

Glen Oliver could not look more at home as he walked through neat rows of date palms towering like giant spiky umbrellas under the clear blue central Australian sky.
"One, two, three, four," he said, as he pointed out a few of the palms he grew from tissue culture in the plantation at the Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI) in Alice Springs.
Mr Oliver, a skilled horticulturalist, has nurtured a huge number of plants and species in the nearly 20 years he has worked at the research farm.
The Mitakoodi man from Western Queensland has tended rockmelons, planted garlic, watered jujubes, and trialled almonds — but the highlight of his career was discovering a new variety of date palm.
Mr Oliver with the Oliver palm.
(
ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis
)
"It didn't look like any of our male palm trees," he said.
"I hit the flower and all this pollen came off. That's when I realised we needed this for our pollen research we were doing at the time.
"
We took the offshoot off and sent it away for DNA testing and it came back unknown, so I put my name on it.
"
Mr Oliver believes the palm was planted years ago by someone who did not realise it was a new, unclassified and undocumented variety of date palm.
A global phenomenon
Mr Oliver said it was the only male palm tree that flowered three times in one season.
Mr Oliver hopes to inspire other Indigenous people to work in agriculture.
(
ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis
)
Since its discovery in 2015, the Oliver palm has been grown in many countries around the world, from Indonesia to the United States.
Mr Oliver said the Oliver palm was so popular in California the US state was aiming to grow "15 to 17 million Oliver palms".
He said discovering the new variety was "amazing" and he was proud to give the palm his name.
"It's great. My name is all around the world,"
he said.
"It means that if you put your heart and mind to it you can do anything you want. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do in life, you can achieve a lot."
Mr Oliver has worked at AZRI for nearly 20 years.
(
ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis
)
Aboriginal achievements in agriculture
Yuin man Rueben Bolt, the deputy vice-chancellor at Charles Darwin University — where Mr Oliver completed his Certificate III in Horticulture back when the institute was called Centralian College — echoed the sentiment.
"Anyone can do this. There's opportunity for anyone to do this,"
he said.
Mr Oliver is a role model for young people.
(
ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis
)
Professor Bolt said more stories like Mr Oliver's needed to be celebrated.
"What you usually hear in a lot of the media is not necessarily the positive stories about Aboriginal people," he said.
Photo shows
A man stands with children dressed in blue shirts and hats around a blue tub filled with dirt covered garlic bulbs.
An Indigenous community harvesting Australia's earliest commercial garlic crop is hoping to pass on farming skills to improve the lives of future generations.
"In Glen's case, this is about the date palm and how it was named after him. That's something to be celebrated.
"That then automatically elevates Glen up into this role model which says to the younger generations 'this is something that can be done'."
Mr Oliver said he hoped other Indigenous people in central Australia would follow his lead.
He said Centrefarm, near Ali Curung, was another example of Aboriginal people doing great things in agriculture.
"I'm so proud of them, what they're doing up there with their garlic,"
he said.
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