Re: Propagation/Germination
- Subject: Re: Propagation/Germination
- From: W* G*
- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:55:59 -0400
On 7/19/01 12:16 AM Tony & Moira Ryan (theryans@xtra.co.nz) wrote:
>Your mention of the Nairobi Arboretum gave me a strong dose of
>nostalgia. As a Nairobi schoolchild in the early 1940s the Arboretum was
>a useful resource for our botany lessons. Oddly there are only two items
>I really remember clearly - a Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria
>heterophylla)
Moira and Tony Ryan,
There were no school groups at the Arboretum when I visited, doubtless
because it was during the Christmas holidays, and I recall no Norfolk
Island Pine there or elsewhere in Nairobi, but there were an
astonishingly large number of street preachers practicing their oratory
on the trees.
The N.I. Pine is very common in the Caribbean, many of the locals
planting them within a few feet of the house though aware of the size to
which they grow. Mine served as our outdoor Christmas tree for a few
years until it passed twenty-five feet and outgrew the ladder.
> I am glad to hear the
>Arboretum has actually survived. So much has gone there, I though it
>might have been cut for firewood by now!
Compared to, say, the Botanical Garden at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, which
is badly overgrown and wholly without labels, the Nairobi Arboretum is in
fine shape and well-visited. Possibly because the financial support comes
in large part from individuals and private industry. During last year's
fierce drought in Kenya many Maasai brought their cattle into Nairobi to
graze but the Arboretum was kept out of bounds to them.
>I wonder if you will have success with the Coco de Mer. I have the
>impression it is a real relict species and very hard to establish
>outside its natural home. I remember the Nairobi museum had a couple of
>the amazing nuts. Tony has had the luck to once visit the Seychelles and
>see it growing, which I never have.
That a friend is growing one successfully in sandy soil at Diani Beach in
Kenya (just south of Mombasa) inspired me to try. The going price of a
seed these days is USD 400 - with no guarantee of viability - but I was
able to buy two for a good deal less through the kind offices of the
director of the Seychelles Museum as I was accompanied by my daughter
from the National Museums of Kenya. Which latter institution, you may be
happy to hear, is doing splendidly and increasingly popular with Kenyans
now that it is no longer the private fief of the Leakey family.
>According to local legend, the plant will /only/ grow successfully on
>Praslin Island - not even on adjacent islands.
You ought to hear some Caribbean legends. But the coco de mer also grows
naturally on Curieuse and Round Hill islands in the Seychelles and a few
are in cultivation at Mahe. And a very few in tropical gardens in Java
and elsewhere. There were (are?) one in Jamaica and another in Guyana.
But none, as far as I know, anywhere else in the West Indies...so far.
>The nuts are huge and - notoriously - can be seen to take on various
>aspects of rude human shapes when seen from various angles. The mildest
>of these is that they can look like a pair of human buttocks seen from
>behind.
There is no escaping the suggestiveness of the seed shape. It is even the
favored form for swimming pools in the Seychelles.
Warm regards,
William Glover
Nevis, West Indies
