THE BOOK

Two centuries of Peruvian mesquite in Hawaii

Spanning Peru to Hawaiʻi, Legacy Legumes follows the mesquite Prosopis from the desert civilizations of coastal Peru to the shores of Hawaiʻi, where, as kiawe, it became both a maligned "invasive" and a engine of abundance. Drawing on twenty years retracing Father Bachelot's 1827 voyage, Neil Logan weaves botany, colonial and religious history, and Indigenous knowledge into one sweeping account, and closes with a practical framework for these leguminous "legacy" trees.

FORMAT

Hardcover, paperback, and digital

EXTENT

~296 pp, full color

ILLUSTRATIONS

239 photos · 39 diagrams · 18 maps

FOREWARD

Gary Paul Nabhan

PUBLISHED

December 2026

Twenty years of original fieldwork across Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Hawaiʻi.
No comparable book exists — the definitive natural and cultural history of kiawe/mesquite.
An original botanical description of Prosopis limensis in Hawaiʻi, with radiocarbon dating.

Bridges Indigenous and scientific knowledge — Quechua, Aymara, Hawaiian, and Western botany.
Not just history — a working framework for food security, soil, and climate.
239 original photographs, most taken by the author across four decades.

PRAISE

“Thanks to his meticulous and profoundly thoughtful work over several decades, [Neil] offers us an entirely fresh perspective… so radical in its literary and graphic stance that it is likely to change the way many of us respond to trees — as in Richard Powers' The Overstory or Suzanne Simard's Mother Tree. In stunning storytelling and graphic imagery, Neil Logan has done us all a great service that I sense will be of lasting value to humanity.”

— Gary Paul Nabhan, from the Foreword

“Original, thought-provoking, and informative — a significant contribution, from a knowledgeable expert on mesquite.”

— Richard S. Felger, from his correspondence with the author

“We all dream about an abundant future, but very few of us dare to make an actionable plan towards it. Legacy Legumes looks at the past to inspire us on how to create an ancestral future. By honoring the mysterious forces of nature and its story through time, Neil Logan describes what is our role as human beings in supporting nature in the pathway to paradise. A beautiful reading that will open your eyes to what a tree can do for humanity.”

— Giovana Simao Slanzon, PhD, soil scientist, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa