New York – Martinique 2016, part 11 (Martinique)
Within the scope of the botanical garden that exists on Habitacion Clement there is a couple of ponds and around them in addition to different trees there are also different modern sculptures.
One of the first types of trees I came across here, which for me as a European constitutes a sheer exotic and manifestation of an incredible imagination of the creator, was the cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis). This is the tree I have already mentioned earlier within the scope of my stories from Brazil (https://www.svudapodji.com/en/brazil-1/).
Of course, there was also its highly interesting flower.
When I’m talking about plants with an “explosive” name, I certainly must say something about the dynamite tree (Hura crepitans) that I also saw here. Its other name is the sandbox tree.
When you look at it like this quietly growing beside a pond in the botanical garden of Habitacion Clement, you could perhaps wonder at such a name. And yet – it is one of the most dangerous trees in the world! Once you get close to it, one level of danger (and there are more) becomes quite obvious.
In addition to all these spines all over the trunk, the tree is also poisonous, but even this is not all. Its name comes from the fact that when its fruit with the seeds has fully ripened and dried out, it bursts so strongly that it creates an explosion-like sound, while the seeds may fly to a distance of over 15 m and this is certainly good for the proliferation of the tree. But, what makes this tree particularly dangerous when it comes to its scattering of the seeds is that these seeds may fly at the speed of over 200 km/h and if a person or an animal are in the vicinity, the seeds can inflict some serious injuries.
When I was walking beside this tree, although I saw its fruit and even took a photo of it (in the shape of a small pumpkin), it was clear that the fruit was still green and therefore there was no danger for me.
The dynamite tree naturally grows in the South and North Americas and there is also another tree coming from the American continent (more from the middle, i.e., from Central America and the north of South America) which from a distance also seems quite fine. This is the kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra).
But, when you get closer, there are again some thorns and quite big ones at that.
Still, this is a rather useful tree and in addition to the fact that it can grow to the impressive height of 73 m, it is also commercially grown because of the fibres that are like silk or cotton (hence one of its names – the silk cotton tree) and that are obtained from its cocoon with the seed. Parts of the tree are also used for traditional medicinal purposes, in addition to which this is the holy tree of the Mayas.
There were, of course, other tree species, such as enormous bamboos, the breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), the teak (Tectona grandis), as well as the rubber fig (Ficus elastica).
Although the rubber fig that comes from south and southeast Asia and that belongs to the same group of figs as the banyan tree (I have mentioned it in the previous sequel of the stories) contains a large quantity of latex, natural rubber is commercially produced from the latex collected from the Amazonian rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) which actually comes from South America.
Here on Habitacion Clement I also saw a baobab, specifically the African baobab (Adansonia digitata). When I was preparing this story, I actually found this particularly interesting because a few years after this journey and before writing this story I had an opportunity to see quite different species of baobab that are endemic on Madagascar.
Cendrine and I were here looking at the trees that grow around two ponds that exist close to the entrance into the botanical garden and that certainly only go to add to the beauty of the whole place.
After the circle around the ponds, we got back to the line of Cuban royal palms (Roystonea regia). There I played a little with my camera.
And yet, no matter how many photos I took and how much I played with it, on this occasion I was a mere shadow of Cendrine. Bearing in mind that she is crazy about plants and that this is her profession, she took photos of each tree, each leaf, each trunk, not to mention the flowers and fruits. While waiting for her to photograph her heart out, I occasionally felt slight hints of boredom, but in the end I managed quite nicely to relax, give in and enjoy. After all, this is how my friends must feel when I start taking photos.
Around the park I could see banana plantations, but now ahead of us was a visit to a part of the botanical garden that hosts numerous different palm trees.
Although palms often get this “tree” in their name, they are actually only tree-like, while in fact they are not proper trees at all, since they don’t have the growth-rings. Their “trunk” is in fact made by the leaves that have dried and fallen off, and also the diameter of the trunk does not grow with years, as is the case with real trees.
Still, before moving on to look at palm trees, we passed by a calabash tree (Crescentia cujete) which in this case was not very big, but it had a really big fruit.
We also past by several big mango trees in which we could already see some fruits, but it was clear that they were still not ripe.
Then we went to the top of an elevation where there was an old sugarcane mill that quite some time ago used to be animal-operated.
The mill was originally manufactured on Haiti, but was brought here in order to be used for squeezing juice out of sugarcane by oxen pulling the leverages of the mill in circle. With time, the sugarcane squeezing technology advanced and so the mill lost its purpose and was dismantled. Then, in 1998 it was reassembled and installed here on the clearing as a part of the industrial exhibition.
Close to the mill there are several Mexican blue palms (Brahea armata) which, as it may be concluded from their name, naturally grow in Mexico. Much more than the specific colour of the leaves of this palm, I was delighted by the leaves themselves that appear to have more than a full circle and thus the leaf lobes that grow out of a single petiole are not spread like fingers of a hand, in one plane, but rather they ripple a couple of times making a kind of a pleat.
There was again another big palm – the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera). I say “again”, since I had already had a photo of me taken beside this palm that grew in front of the entrance into the plantation, which can be seen in the previous sequel of the stories about my travel around Martinique.
This palm originally comes from the south of India and from Sri Lanka, and it is one of the biggest palm trees in the world – it can grow to the height of 25 metres. There are a couple of interesting aspects about this palm. It can live to around 60 years on an average, but it belongs to monocarpic plants, which means that it flowers just once in its lifetime. But when it flowers, it flowers with all its might – its inflorescence is the biggest one in the world. When the palm finally does flower, after several decades of life, it takes around a year for its fruits to ripen and then each one of these fruits has a seed. After the ripening of the fruit, the palm simply dies.
Here I also saw a palm with a red trunk aptly named the lipstick palm (Cyrtostachys renda). It comes from southeast Asia.
There were many other different palm trees here as well, but I could no longer follow their names, opting instead just to take photos of some of them or some of their parts.
Once we had finished with the visit of this section with palms, we were rather exhausted from tiredness and heat, but we still had some parts of the distillery to visit.
As I’ve mentioned in the previous sequel of the story, this plantation produces very good quality agricultural rum (rhum agricole) made of sugarcane juice. During our visit of these facilities, they showed us where the rum is stored in wooden barrels, but they also emphasised that because of the air temperature and the porosity of the barrels, around 8% of the rum evaporates on the annual basis. For this reason, they fill up these barrels and when doing so they also check the state of the drink.
There were also many other industrial facilities, plants and storage spaces, but I must admit I was not so interested in all of that. In Cendrine’s company, I was also much more interested in different plants that we were finding here.
Here I also saw a fruit of the dynamite tree that seemed rather dry and I wondered if it would be wise actually for me to move away from the tree lest I should be injured by a flying seed.
And so we headed for the administration buildings that belong to the plantation.
There I noticed a tree that I have often seen in the tropics and for which I realised in the meantime that originally it came from Madagascar. This is the flame tree (Delonix regia).
This tree that is fully covered in bright red flowers during the rainy season is grown as a decorative tree, as well as because it has dense treetop and therefore creates a good shade. It is interesting, however, that it should not be planted near a house since it has exceptionally strong roots that can destroy even the strongest of foundations.
Then Cendrine and I went to a yard around which there were houses that I presume served as administration houses. There we also saw a large tamarind tree (Tamarindus indica).
Although this tree originates in Sudan, over time people have spread it throughout tropical and subtropical regions. This is a leguminous tree and its fruit contains a pulp used in the cuisines around the world, especially in Mexico and in south Asia.
But, as far as the trees go, my favourite is the banyan tree with its impressive and massive buttress roots.
Here we finished more or less with our sightseeing of trees and plants, although we also encountered different flowering plants that grow in-between different industrial facilities. We also ran into a local locust or perhaps it actually ran into us. Or, to be more precise, into Cendrine.
And then, as a final touch, we also visited an exhibition of a contemporary Haitian painter, with which we have completed our tour of the plantation. In the end, it turned out we spent all 5 hours here!
Hungry and thirsty, we drove to place Le Francois where we wanted to sit somewhere and eat something nice, but as it happened this was not possible since all the restaurants had closed for lunch (it was late afternoon), plus it was a Sunday. So, instead, we took a short walk.
Le Francois is a place on the Atlantic coast of Martinique and numerous scuba-diving excursions leave from here since there are several smaller islands nearby, but, judging by the quantity of nets that lay on the docks, this is also a starting point for fishing.
In the end we managed to find a small restaurant the bar of which was still open and then they offered us fish to go. However, when they brought us the fish, they proposed that we eat it at the restaurant after all, although the fish had already been properly packed for transportation. This was acoupa weakfish, a fish species that lives in western Atlantic.
After the meal, we walked a little beside the port and then we drove to village Le Robert. It was already 5 pm and since the Sun was setting around 6 we did not have much time to visit anything. So, we just made a circle on foot around a small park by the shore and that was it.
And then we got into the car so that Cendrine could take me back to Ducos. Although the excursion of the day was a little unusual for me, I still found it interesting because I saw and learned a lot of new things, while Cendrine was very amusing and pleasant company. Before returning to my rented room, I enjoyed a little bit more from the car in the colours and the sights created by the setting Sun.