Author Archives: shellvet

Peewah and Corbeaux

On April 22, an organization called EarthMedic (http://earthmedic.com and https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=earthmedic) celebrated Earth Day on Lady Chancellor Hill, by having three tree-planting sessions on different parts of the hillside. (Had to have 3 small COVID-regulation compliant groups, rather than one large group.) Lady Chancellor hillsides suffer the ravages of bushfires annually, so this was a very welcome project!  The wildlife will appreciate a new food source as well.

The choice of plant was interesting. Earth Medic chose a palm that most Trinis have heard of, even if we can’t recognize it, and most of us love to eat its fruit, though it’s easier to find apples or grapes in our supermarkets.

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The chosen plant was the Peewah palm or Bactris gasipaes. Peewah is found throughout Trinidad, and though its origins are obscure, it is widespread in the low, wet regions of tropical America. The Peewah tree has a tall, straight, beautifully-ringed, trunk with sharp, black spines. It bears separate male and female flowers which open in sequence. Peewah flower pollination is a is an elegant example of co-evolution with a particular type of beetle which transfers pollen from the male to the female flower. The fruit mature in 3 to 4 months. Scientists infer from seed remains found in Costa Rica, that the palm was cultivated by the Chibcha civilization as long as 2,300 years ago! By the time the Spanish colonists had arrived in the Americas, the Peewah palm was a staple food of Amerindian communities from Brazil to Central America. To the shame and discredit of Spain, their colonists felled tens of thousands of Peewah palms in Costa Rica in an effort to starve, crush and control the indigenous people.

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Peewah fruit (I understand they are also known as peach palm – though not in T&T) are borne in large yellow, orange, or red bunches of as many as 300 fruit! I have never seen them actually being picked, but picking them must be challenging, because of the formidable thorns that embellish the tree trunk. Trinis boil the fruit in salted water and eat them as a savoury snack, but the fruit is, and has been for centuries, a nutritious staple in Central and South America. They were traditionally used in a variety of ways – boiled, preserved as a silage, made into fermented drinks, and gluten-free flour made from the flesh. Oil can be extracted from both seed and flesh, and the seed can be eaten as a nut. Nowadays, the tree is cultivated for heart of palm for the gourmet market.

I tried a Central American recipe in which the fruit are halved and the seed removed. The half fruit are then brushed with oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper before roasting in the oven. My roasted Peewah were delicious! I’ve planted some Peewah seedlings in my own garden. Can’t wait the 3 to 5 years for them to start fruiting!

Coragyps atratus – the common Corbeau

The black vulture, familiarly known as the Corbeau (pronounced Cobo) might be the most easily recognizable bird of all to most Trinis. Surprisingly, this bird is a resident of Trinidad, but not of Tobago! The word ‘corbeau’ is actually French for raven, not vulture, but the name ‘Corbeau’ is definitely set in stone, so I’m not proposing we change it! Corbeaux can be seen in many parts of T&T – not just on Lady Chancellor Hill. Because they feed on carrion, they have a very important role to play, not just in cleaning up our environment, (and I’m sorry to admit that we Trinis really need this), but also in the recycling of carbon and nitrogen. These large vultures can be admired, gracefully soaring and spiralling high up in air currents, or perched on wires with wings outstretched, warming up in the morning, or drying their feathers after a shower. The most familiar sight however, is of large birds on the ground, devouring remains of animals killed by cars on roads, consuming entrails of fish at beaches and fishing depots, or cleaning up after us on rubbish heaps and at garbage dumps.

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The most famous of our Trini Corbeaux, and perhaps also the most famous of Lady Chancellor Hill residents, is Grommit. Grommit is the protagonist of a childrens’ story in the book ‘Stories from the Cockpit’ by local author, Andy Campbell. It is the story of a real Corbeau fledgling that was rescued after falling out of his nest on Lady Chancellor Hill, fancifully narrated by Grommit himself. The book is beautifully illustrated with both drawings and photos. My favourite photo is of Grommit running along the top of Lady Chancellor Hill with after his rescuer, wings unfurled. I actually saw him doing this and in my first ever, very close-up view of a corbeau, I was astonished to find that his plumage, which appeared from a distance to be a dull black, was actually tinged with shiny iridescent green.

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My personal experience of the marvellous job that Corbeaux do, occurred several years ago, when a pony died not far from my house on Lady Chancellor Hill and was buried in a shallow grave on the hillside. A day or two later, the pong was so awful that my family had to vacate our house and spend the day elsewhere. As we left the house, we saw that every tree top within a radius of about 200 yards of the grave, was black with corbeaux. Huge birds perched on every branch of every tree! It was as if every Corbeau in T&T had got wind of the rotting carcass and had come over to partake. It was a macabre image. On our return later that night, the noxious smell was gone, the carcass, I suspect, was reduced to bare bones (I didn’t go to check…), and the Corbeaux were my heroes.

I hope we will all view Corbeaux in a different light!

FRANGIPANI MOTH UPDATE!

I wrote about the Frangipani caterpillar in March and featured photos of brightly coloured caterpillars and de-foliated Frangipani shrubs. What should show up inside my house one April evening, but a large Frangipani moth – the adult form of this Frangipani caterpillar! It was a beauty! This moth is a night feeder, gathering its nectar after dark, its muted grey and brown tones helping to keep it invisible to would-be predators. In addition to this nighttime camouflage, some scientists think that the moth stores toxic chemicals from the latex of the caterpillar’s food plants, and this makes it unpalatable to any creature that tries to eat it. With a wingspan of as much as 14 cm, when the Frangipani moth swooped into my house that evening, I initially mistook it for a bat! The magnificent adult moth usually lives a mere 2 weeks, but the lifespan of the hatched egg through the larval and pupal stages to the adult moth, may be as long as 10 weeks.

Who would have thought that these two creatures were one and the same!

Yellow Poui

Yellow Poui or Ipé (Tabebuia serratifolia or Handroanthos serratifolia) in dazzling bloom is a familiar sight in the dry season on Lady Chancellor Hill as well as on most of the hillsides of the Northern range.  This spectacular tree is a large, slow-growing, native forest tree, whose wood is prized for its beauty, its extreme durability, resistance to termite attack and even for fire resistance. Because of its durability, Yellow Poui is among the most popular and in-demand tropical hardwoods in the world, particularly for decking and boardwalks. Poui lumber may last as much as 5 times as long as teak. It has a Janka rating ( a measure of hardness of wood) of 3680 lb_f, (compare teak at 1000 lb_f).

The Pink Poui or Apamat, (Tabebuia pentaphylla aka Tababuia rosea) is a relative of the yellow, and rivals it in beauty of the blooming tree, as well as in the beauty of the wood. Both varieties of Poui require a distinct dry period before flowering. The bunches of pink trumpet-like flowers can vary from pale pink to magenta. The leaf is palmate with 5 leaflets. The fruit are long, slender and bean-like, and contain delicate winged seeds. Bark, flowers leaves and roots of the Pink Poui have been used in traditional medicine against a variety of ailments including cancer. The bark contains a compound called lapachol which has antibacterial, antifungal, antiprotozoal and cytotoxic activity. Opinions differ as to whether the pink Poui tree is native to T&T – it probably isn’t, but it’s definitely here to stay!

_{Unripe Poui pod and dry seeds, palmate Poui leaf with 5 leaflets, and tiny pink Poui seedling germinating, Pink Poui inflorescence, Poui seeds.}

Red-Tailed Squirrel

Our Trini squirrel is the Red-tailed Squirrel – Sciurus granatensis – and it is our only native squirrel. There are several individuals that frequent my garden, and help themselves to my fruit – whichever variety is in season.  My squirrels are no doubt very happy that both the Caimite and the Sapodilla trees are currently covered in fruit. The squirrels occasionally descend from one tree and run across the ground to another, but more often, they stay in the trees, leaping from limb to limb, hanging upside down from the ends of branches and nibbling bites of fruit near the end of the stem. Eventually the fruit breaks off the stem, falls, and the squirrel moves on to the next sapodilla or caimite. All is not lost – my dogs, or visiting agouti, clear up the fallen fruit while the thriftless squirrel hurtles along to his next snack.

In our Conservation of Wildlife Act, squirrels are categorized, along with rats and mice, as vermin, and may be hunted and destroyed during any season, with or without a licence. Worse than this is the Trini penchant for trapping and keeping wild animals as pets. In veterinary practice, I have seen many a ‘pet’ squirrel, malnourished, scraggy and with bald patches. It is distressing to see a wild animal being forced to languish in captivity because of the ignorance of its captor.

Sapodillas and Caimites

Aside from producing a rather plain-looking, but absolutely delectable fruit, one of these trees is famous and unique for two very different reasons. The wood of the Sapodilla tree, (Manilkara sapota) is so durable and resistant to insect attack, that intact sapodilla wood beams have been found amid the ruins of temples in ancient Mayan cities. Since the Mayan civilization was in decline by about AD 900, these Sapodilla wood lintels have survived intact for more than one thousand years!

Early Central American peoples discovered another remarkable property of the Sapodilla tree. It could be tapped, and a gummy latex called chicle, extracted, collected and chewed, to quench thirst and stave off hunger. The Aztecs went further, and chewed chicle to freshen their breath. American entrepreneurs in the 1800’s imported Central American chicle, experimented with methods of processing it, and by the 1920’s the average American chewed 102 sticks of ‘gum’ per year! Unsustainable chicle harvesting methods threatened the sapodilla forests of Central America until cheaper synthetic substitutes became available. Luckily, we in Trinidad have no shortage of Sapodilla trees and we can have our fill of their fruit which are tasty and nutritious.

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The Streak Lizard

Gonatodes vittatus, or the Streak Lizard, is a small, very common gecko in my garden. There are dozens of them around on paths, garden walls, rocks, and tree trunks. They seem active both during the day, and at night. The male has a bright, white stripe with a black border, and this stripe runs from his head to the tip of his tail. The female is spotted and has a faint stripe. Neither is longer than about 3 inches from snout to tip of tail. I’ve seen streak lizards eating ants, small beetles and spiders. One perplexing behaviour of these lizards, that I have noticed, is that they sometimes curl the tails over their backs in a very scorpion-like posture. There have been suggestions about the significance of this posture, but herpetologists are uncertain. I’ve definitely been put on my guard for an instant seeing a creature on the ground in scorpion pose, then quickly realizing that that the spurious scorpion is actually a tiny Streak Lizard.

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Silver Garden Orbweaver (Argiope argentata)

Silver Garden Orbweaver  Argiope argentata I recently noticed this “noiseless, patient’ spider (Thanks, Walt Whitman) skilfully constructing a web on the outside of a window pane. I watched her over a period of a week or so, and marvelled at how rapidly she grew. Her web was large and beautiful and she lurked at the centre of it, head down, waiting for her ‘Food Drop’ (Trini equivalent of Uber Eats).  One day, out of the blue, it seemed that her legs had doubled in length! But no, on closer inspection, I realized that she had embellished her web with a large ‘X’ shape, spun in white silk. The X, radiated outwards from the hub of the web.  My Arachne sat superimposed over her silken X, and her legs appeared twice as long. I was mystified. I discovered that Orb Weaver Spiders adorn their webs with patterns of dense silk” which rejoice in the name ‘stabilimenta’.

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Spider ‘peongs’ (Trini word for ‘fans’ or ‘fanatics’) will have known about this, but I was very excited to learn it. I admit I’m a bit happy to find that even the arachnologists of the world are not certain of the function of these arresting silken structures. Theories abound, with erudite names like the predator–protection hypothesis and the prey-attraction hypothesis. I know my heart skipped a few beats when I thought Arachne’s legs had grown massively, and whether she viewed me as potential predator or prey, I would have left her well alone.

I’ll take my leave and see you in April!

FEBRUARY BLOOMS AND BEASTS

February is here and the dry season is gradually wending its way toward its peak. Despite occasional light showers, the Chancellor hillside is gradually changing from a predominantly lush and intense, dark green, to a dryer-looking, yellow/orange and brown hue. Many of the trees are shedding their leaves, so that the canopy cover is wearing thin in places.

A very noticeable tree all over the Chancellor hillside at the moment is our native Cypre (pronounced ‘Sip’) or Cordia alliodora. Cypre trees, tall and beautifully proportioned, are now in bloom, their crowns adorned with numerous, large, bunches of tiny white flowers which are white at first, then become brown after a few days. The miniature, butterfly and bee-pollinated, white flowers, spin propellor-like to the ground with a tiny fruit attached. This fruit is described as ‘edible but not tasty’. I plan to sample my first Cypre (awful pun) as soon as I can pick a perfectly ripe one – no easy feat, as the trees can be up to 40 m tall! The most prized part of the tree is the termite and fungus-resistant wood, which is widely used in construction, joinery, and cabinet making, and is a beautiful, golden to dark brown colour. One tree that was cut down about 7 years ago when a portion of Chancellor hillside was (illegally) cleared, was rescued from the bulldozer and the fire, and upcycled into the table in the photo. The appeal of the wood is obvious, and it scores 890 lb_f on the Janka scale – a scale of wood hardness, which measures the force required to embed a steel ball into a standard sample of heartwood. (Compare Teak at 1000 lb_f )

Cypre trees and flowers, and furniture made from a Cypre tree.

This stunningly beautiful caterpillar is called Dirphia avia and is a member of the silkmoth or Saturniidae family. I’ve seen it in my garden on Chancellor for two years in a row at this time of year. Thanks to Dirphia, I discovered the words urticating and aposematism. The beautiful beast is covered in structures called scoli that bear numerous vicious-looking spines. These spines are urticating and – you guessed it, they induce a painful stinging or prickling sensation when touched. Dirphia caterpillars have spines with poison glands at their bases. These actually eject a toxin when the tip is broken. Aposematism is the caterpillar’s way of making it known to would-be predators, that they would be well advised to leave it alone. The very visible and elaborate, spines send a clear signal that this grub should not be eaten. While the Dirphia caterpillar might serve as inspiration for a wonderful, showy Carnival costume, the adult moth that emerges from its cocoon is rather less ornate. Its wingspan of between 7 and 12 cm, might inspire a more traditional mas’ type of costume, presenting more muted tones of velvety tan and brown. I will do my best to find one of these moths (if I don’t mistake it for a bat!).

In my own garden, there is a beautiful shrub which bursts into flower and becomes completely snow-white as Christmas approaches, and it remains a dazzling, lacy white for several weeks. This is Euphorbia leucocephala, (I’ve heard it called white lace poinsettia), and it is a relative of the popular red poinsettia. Amazingly, like the red poinsettia, (also pictured), this plant with the delicate, miniature white flowers, is photoperiodic. This means that the plant can actually detect when the days shorten and the nights lengthen. The increase in hours of darkness, triggers the tiny leaves that surround the buds, to change colour from green to white!

So, as the end of the year approaches, tiny pale flower buds appear and all the surrounding leaves begin to turn white. To top it all off, these exquisite flowers have a wonderful fragrance that I always connect with Christmas. In February, my lace poinsettia is approaching the end of its flowering season.  A point of caution is that plants in this genus all produce a sticky white latex which can be irritant, so be careful if you decide to break a sprig off, not to get any latex into your eyes, or on to broken skin. Admire the flowers from afar!

One interesting, but unwelcome creature that I regularly see on a particular part of my Chancellor walk, is the Giant African Land Snail, GALS (Achatina fulica). This non-native snail, one of the largest species of land snail known, is a notifiable animal in Trinidad and Tobago – though I hope that you have better luck than I had, if you see one and try to notify the authorities. Our alien snail has the notoriety of appearing in second place among the Top 100 World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species on the Global Invasive Species database. This snail is a major agricultural pest, and a carrier of both parasites and bacteria that can cause serious illness in people, and other pathogens that are harmful to plants. Their decaying shells can change the properties of soil, affecting plant growth.  They are however a good source of protein and are actually farmed for meat in some countries. I have even seen recipes using GALS – Pomegranite Glazed African Snails and Slow Cooked Giant African Land Snails to name a couple! Obviously, careful handling of the raw meat and thorough cooking is of the utmost importance. (I don’t recommend trying it ). Predators of the snail, include rats, fire ants, wild boars, crabs and carnivorous snails.

GALS are native of East Africa, in particular Kenya and Uganda. They have now reared their ugly feet (?) in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world. They eat many types of plant, including hundreds of food crop species, other crops of economic importance e.g., cotton, teak, mahogany and rubber plants, as well as garden ornamental plants. GALS will consume both live and decaying material, and because they have a very great need for dietary calcium, they will even eat stones, cement, stucco and bones of animal carcasses! They are well equipped to survive even the harshest of dry seasons because they can aestivate, sealing themselves into their shells with an impermeable plug, and slowing down their metabolism for up to 3 years, or until environmental conditions become favourable.

GALS capacity to multiply is phenomenal! These creatures can reproduce from as early as 6 months after hatching. Each adult snail contains both male and female reproductive systems, so produces both eggs and sperm. Mating involves transfer of sperm in both directions. Eggs can be laid within 8 days or can be stored internally for up to 2 years – then laid, 500 at a time, 5 or 6 times a year, for as long as 9 years. Reproduction of this is definitely NOT at snail’s pace.

And now, a twist in the snail, sorry, tale. Snails show chiral symmetry both of the shell and the internal organs. This means that some snails are ‘righties’ (shell and innards coiling clockwise) and a few are lefties (shells and innards coiling anticlockwise). Mating between righties and lefties is impossible. What a conumdrum!

Most of us have heard of the mountain immortelle – a tree that was brought to our shores over 300 years ago from South America, to provide shade for young cocoa and coffee plants on hillside plantations. The immortelle (Erythrina poeppigiana aka Erythrina micropterix) is not common on the Chancellor slopes, but a few specimens are conspicuously in flower at the moment – with spectacularly beautiful crowns of bright, orange-red flowers. The vividly coloured, nectar-rich, flower clusters are loved by hummingbirds, tangers and honeycreepers, and by bees, and are edible. Monkeys and parrots consume these flowers, and in Colombia and Guatemala, they are used in traditional cooking. Immortelle leaves have been used medicinally on sows by Trini farmers, but the seeds of its pod-like fruit are reportedly poisonous.  

Not only are immortelles absolutely stunning as they play the role of ‘cocoa mamas’ or madres de cacao, but these remarkable trees are able to improve the soil in which they grow, by working in partnership with microbes that take up residence in their roots, to take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and turn it into a form that they themselves, as well neighbouring plants can use. In exchange for trapping and converting the nitrogen to a more useful form, the immortelle tree supplies the microbes with energy for the whole process. It’s a win-win situation!

The Frangipani caterpillar, Pseudosphynx tetrio, is well known, because its preferred host plant, the Frangipani or Plumeria, is a common one in suburban gardens, and the caterpillar is familiar and easily spotted, because of its large size, and bright colouring. Each caterpillar starts off life as one of about 100 eggs laid by the parent moth. For about 30 days after hatching, it wanders, gorging on frangipani leaves, moulting five or six times, and growing up to 6 inches long. Entire trees can be stripped bare of leaves in just a few days, but they usually recover completely despite this assault. The pupa stage follows, well hidden in leaf litter, (so I don’t have a photo to show), and lasts about three weeks, then finally a large brown, grey and white moth emerges. (and I mean large – wingspan can be 14 cm!)

One of the caterpillar’s monikers – ‘Frangipani hornworm’ is given because of the long ‘horn’ that protrudes from the 8^th segment of the abdomen. I think it looks more like a tail, or even a sting, but ‘horn’ is the official term for this add-on. This caterpillar is eye-catching! It is velvety black, with a red head, its body is interspersed with bright bands of yellow, and its neck, legs and tail segment, are orange mottled with black spots. As I discovered when researching the Dirphia caterpillar, this snazzy coloration is aposematic. It is clamouring out to would-be predators – “Leave me alone, I taste revolting!”. These cunning creatures, feast on Frangipani leaves and in doing so, consume the plant’s toxic, white latex – which doesn’t harm them. They then cunningly sequester the noxious goo, and use it for defence when challenged! As if this weren’t enough, the caterpillar when troubled, rears its head from side to side, snake-like, (some say Coral Snake-like), in a further attempt to discourage predators. If these measures fail, the Fangipani caterpillar will nip! All in all, I recommend it’s best to admire the dazzling colours from a safe distance. Even so, some years ago, my toddler daughter actually put one in her mouth and sucked out the insides. I retrieved the hollowed-out exoskeleton from her mouth. She suffered no ill effects and we both lived to tell the tale.

Here’s a snail poem – by William Cowper, an 18th century British poet. Enjoy!

The Snail

To grass, or leaf, or fruit or wall, The snail sticks close, nor fears to fall. As if he grew there, house and all Together

Within that house secure he hides, When danger imminent betides, Of storm, or other harm besides Of weather

Give but his horns the slightest touch, His self-collecting power is such, He shrinks into his house with much Displeasure

Thus hermit-like, his life he leads, Nor partner of his banquet needs, And if he meets one only feeds The faster

Who seeks him must be worse than blind, He and his house are so combined, If, finding it he fails to find Its master.

This month, defying COVID lockdown rules and regulations, the bloodwood trees, Croton gossypiifolius have their candle-like flowers out on display on the Chancellor hillside. Bloodwood is a common, small, native tree that has erect flowering spikes that bear small, white flowers. The tree has large, hairy three-lobed leaves, which turn bright orange before falling off. This tree has other local names – candle tree, bois sang (guess what! – this means blood wood, in French), and our Venezuelan neighbours call it sangre drago. If you are wondering why the fixation on blood, look at the photo below. If the wood is cut, a dark liquid sap which resembles blood, oozes to the surface. This sap or latex is said to be astringent and it really does look like blood!

BLOOMS

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Large, showy blooms of the Cocrico bush brighten up both my garden and the Chancellor hillside at the moment. Cocrico bush has many aliases. It is variously called Senna bacillaris, Cassia fruticosa and Christmas bush. This is another small native tree with bunches of drooping, luxuriant, deep yellow flowers. Bumble bees are definitely among the pollinators – the Cocrico bush in my garden is always alive with them. I have never seen a Cocrico on or near the tree, but I’ll wait in hope. (The Cocrico drawing below is by Nadia Ramjattan of the Forestry Information Unit! _{http://biodiversity.gov.tt/home/image-gallery/category/2-art-by-nadya-ramjattan-forestry-information-unit.html)}

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My next highlighted wild plant on Lady Chancellor hillside is the Firecracker plant, Pitcairnia integrifolia, and it is a saxicolous bromeliad! What do you make of the word ‘saxicolous’? I had to look it up. If you speak Latin, (and I have to admit I don’t), the word is self explanatory. ‘Saxum’ means ‘rock’ and ‘colous’ means ‘living or growing on’. Most of the more familiar bromeliads are epiphytes that grow comfortably on trees or even electric wires and lamp posts. This remarkable saxicolous bromeliad can grow on BARE ROCK. Look out for the long, drooping, grass-like leaves overhanging the cliff face on your left as you walk up Lady Chancellor Road road. Be dazzled by the long, branched, scarlet clusters of flowers! This plant definitely rocks.