While I was staying in St. Croix, my friend Liz, an incredible hostess who provided mouth-watering meals and superb entertainment suggested we should visit St. George Village Botanical Gardens. She also insisted we should have a guide, her treat. As a result, I learned so much about tropical plants that I filled three pages of notes and took a great many photos so I could produce today's column.
I'm a terrible note taker, hoping my memory will fill in the gaps. That has become a very foolish idea nowadays. Just trying to figure out which of 24 photos was the Sandbox tree and which the Carobola was worse than putting names to the tropical fish I swam with at the barrier reef.
Our guide, who normally takes groups of small children around the gardens, was extremely nervous, having been given the mistaken idea that I was some sort of horticultural authority. Even though I assured her I was merely an entertainer, she always looked extremely relieved whenever she spied James, one of the gardeners, nearby. James was an expert horticulturalist, having worked at the Gardens for 28 years. He knew his plants by both their Latin and common names, their history and their uses. Sporting a large gold tooth, he'd grin at our naïve questions, but answer them all.
The most interesting plant we learned about was the Pain Killer tree, whose giant green leaves when heated and applied to an aching joint or a wound, relieves the pain. Our guide pointed out the funny looking fruit, a large lumpy cream-colored orb speckled with brown dots. It is made up of the mature ovaries of the white flowers, which fuse together, the brown dots the remains of each individual flower. It was only when our guide referred to this plant by its other name, Noni, that my ears perked up as I suddenly remembered the bottle of Noni juice I was once offered by a friend.
This gentleman swore by Noni's curative powers and always kept a supply on hand, drinking it religiously each night. When he learned about Hank's cancer, he sent us a case of the stuff. It supposedly cures just about anything - rheumatism, arthritis, cancer and even eliminates head lice, in case you have any. Hank was as unenthusiastic about this drink as I was, but consumed a glass or two before we handed the remainder to the children.
A very appropriately named tree
we saw was the Shaving Brush tree,
its flowers containing a swirl of white
stamens tipped with yellow pollen.
I stuck one in the crotch of the tree,
hoping to show you not just the
flower but the strange mottled bark.
No, it's not crawling with caterpillers
or suffering from psorisis. This com-
bination of colors - green, yellow,
white and brown - is the normal bark.
Most shaving brush trees produce
deep pink shaving brushes.
When our guide mentioned that our next stop would be the orchard, all I could picture was apples, peaches, plums and pears. Ah, but this was an orchard of tropical fruits. OK, I was familiar with kiwis and papayas and the citruses, but what was this prickly green globe? It turned out to be soursop, the fruit that had flavored my icecream the night before. The next tree wasn't showing off its fruit, but our guide said it was a carambolas or starfruit tree, the unfamiliar yellow slices I'd seen in the bowl of cut up fruit we'd enjoyed at breakfast. Formed with five firm ridges so that when sliced each piece makes a perfect star, this fruit will not ripen if picked green, the reason we can't find it our supermarkets. The hog plum, well, I can't remember anything about it but its funny names, so let's move on.
This dead-looking tree is the
fragipanni or plumaria. Its flowers
have a truly heavenly smell.
They're the ones made into lais
that are hung around your neck
when you reach Hawaii.
Our guide claimed that when the
fragipani caterpillers, who have
a symbiotic relationship with
the tree, start munching on the
leaves, they make such a racket
you can hear them chewing.
I've seen many palm trees over the years, in fact I wrote a column about palms back in 2004, but I met two new varieties at the Botanical Garden. The one pictured below had the quaint name of Petticoat palm. Unlike most palms, it doesn't shed. The leaves gently lie down against the trunk as they die, creating a feathery gray skirt that completely hides what's underneath.
The McArthur palm, which
I understood was so named
by the troops encountering
this species in Borneo during
WWII, turns out to be the
Macarthur palm (No capital
A), and came originally from
Sir William Macarthur's
garden in New Guinea. It has
a unique trunk, encircled
with distinctive white rings,
precisely spaced about five
inches apart.
Obviously we saw dozens more trees and shrubs on our visit, but only seeing is believing so I think we'll call it a day. Botanical gardens are fun to visit, but probably not very exciting to hear about.
