Monkey Pod Tree

I mentioned Albizia saman in last week's post about Asplenium and then promised to comment more on this lovely tree in the future. Well, that time is now.


First of all, what a beauty, eh? I am *in love* with the elegant, almost overreaching canopy. The form is so striking and, as common as this tree is in Oahu, I think I will always equate monkey pod tree with my wanderings on this trip.



Not that Albizia saman is native to the Hawaiian islands, it's instead native to Central and South America, distributed between Mexico and Brazil. Indeed, due to the region's geologic history, Hawaii is fairly sparse in terms of native plants. More often that not, the plants that are most popular here are native to other areas and were planted by colonists or passers-through. (Somewhat relevant to this information, in last week's post about breadfruit my friend Matthew asked if Artocarpus was endemic to Hawaii and it's not. It's native to the Malay peninsula and the surrounding islands.)



Here above is another shot of the tree pictured at the top of this post. You can gauge from the Monstera leaves below how big this trunk is. I'd say its diameter was probably around 9-10'. A woman at the Waimea Botanical Garden says the arborists speculate this specimen is over 200 years old. In that case it is quite like the "Samán de Güere" a Venezuelan national treasure and landmark. That specimen was originally recorded by Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist and one of the founders of biogeography, in his trip to South America between 1799 and 1804. You can see an old print of this Venezuelan icon here. Unfortunately, there's scant information about this tree online, in English (and my Spanish is pretty shoddy these days).



I know I'm quite smitten with a new species when I have a ton of photos of the feature I like so much (in this case, the branching habit) and one cursory shot of another key characteristic (in this case, the leaves). In fact, I was relieved to find I had even one picture of the species' pinnately compound leaves. Knowing that the leaves are pinnately compound, you could hazard a guess that Albizia is a member of the pea or legume family, and you'd be right. Technically these days, you'd say it is a member of the Fabaceae family, though Leguminosae is still commonly used and considered acceptable. In either case, Fabaceae trees have similar leaves and pea-pod like fruits. Other species of this family which we have previously discussed are Gleditsia, Robinia, Sophora, Lupinus, Cercis and Cladrastis.



Finally, on a very unscientific note, every time I look at this photo, I can hear Meryl Streep saying in her Danish accent "I had a farm in Africa." Indeed, monkey pod tree is related to Albizia amara, a tree that is found in the dry scrublands between Sudan and South Africa.

91st Street Garden, redux

Last July, I speculated that the garden at 91st Street in Riverside Park would look terrific in May. This week I took a bike ride up that way to find out.

While it may not have been *flooded* with spring color, the garden was quite lovely and had many species in bloom.


Next week I'll highlight a few of the perennials there. In the meantime, I'll show a few plants that I've already covered in blog posts past. First up, Aquilegia species and hybrids:




This one below is a native columbine, Aquilegia canadensis:


A great looking bearded iris (Iris germanica):


And finally, a white ('Alba') hybrid of bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis):


I'll cover the Clematis to the right of the bleeding heart next week. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend!

Cocos nucifera

It was particularly thrilling, while in Puerto Rico, to see coconut palms sprouting out of the sand.

These guys were popping up all over the beaches, and demonstrate well why the coconut palm has been successfully migrating to virtually any beach located between 26ºN and 26ºS.


The origin of Cocos nucifera is up for debate. This plant, whose well-known fruit is unusually buoyant and salt-tolerant, was first recorded in the 1st or 2nd century BC by indigenous Sri Lankans. Fossil records indicate plants that are similar to coconuts existed in New Zealand and Kerala (southwest India).


Books can (and are) written about the coconut. I'll keep this post short, however. Cocos is derivative from the Portuguese word for 'mask' and likely refers to the face-like appearance of the three holes on the coconut shell.

Coconuts are excellent uses for sound design, though they fail to trick even the more medieval mind and only end up triggering a debate about how coconuts migrate:




Finally, I'll end with some good news: Based on my fairly limited online research, it seems there is scant evidence of people being fatally hit on head by a falling coconut, despite the oft-used comparison that this as equally likely to a fatal shark attack. If you're the (extremely) cautious type, better to take your chances on the beach.

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PS -- As I mentioned once before in regards to lotus, nucifera means nut-bearing, which is certainly an apt species name for this plant.

September 11

For the past six years, today marks a climax of (to use a word that is too breezy-sounding for what I mean) melancholia that kicks in each year around mid-August. It is a sad time. Most of my friends know that these days I have been ambivalent about living in New York for all the usual reasons. But today isn't a day for ambivalence, so I am posting a two things that made me want to move to this city in the first place, that captured my imagination and wanderlust, and make me proud to live here still.

91st Street Garden, Riverside Park

I remember seeing the movie, 'You've Got Mail' and thinking, 'Wow, what a pretty garden! ...I wonder if they forced some of those plants to shoot this scene?' during the ending.


In case you too were momentarily distracted from the romantic tribulations of attractive, professional, and unimpeachably nice New Yorkers due to the cinematic horticulture, you may like to know this is the 91st Street Garden in Riverside Park.


As you can see, it's still a lovely garden, and I bet in May it looks just as colorful as it did in the film.