Flor-de São João,continued

A few days back I posted a picture of a plant now in bloom along the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway, called Flor-de-São João. Ginger, a friend in Rio de Janeiro responded with images she took of the same flower in Novo Friburgo. I gather that these in Novo Friburgo are cultivated plants, whereas the ones here are considered wild flowers. Regardless, Ginger's picture is of much better quality than mine and for that reason I share it with my readers. To see more images, open her blog at http://rosemarybrasil.blogspot.com/

Coração de Negro wood

If you're going to be using a mortar to pound the heck out of coffee, corn, urucu and other agricultural products, you sure want one made of a solid, hard wood because it's going to take a lot the beatings. Coração de negro (Chamecrista negrensis) is up for the job. I've used this one very little but I keep it in the reception center more for show. It's heavy as lead! This one has been turned on a lath, for sure. Most mortar and pestles are hacked out of trunks of trees with axes and machetes. Maybe that's the reason we don't see many of these things made out of coração de negro wood!

Coração de Negro

It's probably not by coincidence that yellow is one of the Brazilian national colors. The yellow of gold, yes, but also the many yellow blooming trees found throughout the country. There are several of these in the Santarém region, including coração de negro (Chamecrista negrensis), a tree found in the backyard of the Bosque reception center. I should say trees because there are many of them in the immediate vicinity. They are heavy bloomers, making for a carpet of yellow underneath the trees. When I look at one of these trees, I remember two details. One being the yellow flowers and the other being the extremely hard wood. A few years ago I lightly injured my right hand trying to cut through the trunk of one that had fallen. The axe didn't fair any better. Next image, the wood.

Smoked rubber

This was originally a smoked rubber ball but there's not much roundness left in it anymore. Maybe it could be referred to as a rubber pancake instead. I bought it almost 20 years ago from Milton Marques, who was the largest rubber dealer in Santarem at that time. I remember him taking me into his very large warehouse to see tons of rubber, which for the most part was made up of smoked rubber balls and the smelly coagulated latex mentioned in the previous post. I had gone there specifically to buy a sample for my collection of forest products at Bosque Santa Lucia. I selected the one you see in the image and, yes, it was almost as round as a ball. We didn't have a reception center at that time, so I placed it in Sr. Teixeira's casa de farinha, a shed where he and his family processed manioc. Over the years it got bounced around by visitors but it lost its shape. After all, it's a heavy, solid piece of rubber. If you look closely you'll see that bees are slowly but surely carrying the rubber off to their nests. For what purpose, I don't know.

Rubber tree

Someday I need to do a rubber tree count to see actually how many trees are on the Bosque Santa Lucia property. There are certainly dozens of older ones on the trails I use for tours. I always make it a point to tap a tree to show visitors the latex, which is the origin of what we call rubber. In the image you can see the latex oozing from a cut I made with a fast whack of a machete. When Sr. Teixeira or one of his sons tap a tree, they use a professional tapping knife, which I'll show in another image. We don't commercialize rubber at the Bosque, so my cuts are only demonstrative. In the "real world", there are two cuts in a fish bone design with a small cup-like container fastened to the tree for collecting the dripping latex. In days gone by, the latex would allowed to coagulate in this container, or it would be smoked over a fire before shippment to market. Today most latex is kept in liquid form by adding ammonia. This is the prime rubber used for making surgical gloves and condoms, among other products.

Vine snake

Before leaving the Bosque late this afternoon, I remembered that I hadn't watered the açaí palms. As mentioned in an earlier post, açaí is a palm that loves water. It's natural habitat is on the waterways, especially around the Belém area. I've been successful in keeping a few of these palms alive on the Planalto because I give them extra water and I also mulch the ground around them with discarded organic material, including pruned palm fronds. This litter is fairly thick, so it was no surprise today to see this beautiful vine snake come out from underneath to escape the water I was unknowingly pouring onto it. After some posing, it returned inside the litter.

Building materials

The Cultural Fair for the Lower Amazon is now underway at the Praça São Sebastião here in Santarém and on a visit there I met many old friends from the forest. Some people, yes, but I'm referring to the building materials for the community stands. As I posed to take this picture, I nearly stumbled over a meter long piece of monkey's vine thrown into the street. I must have muttered the name of the vine because the lady inside the stand smiled, as to find it strange that a gringo would know the name of the ribbon-like vine from the genus Bauhinia. You may remember that I described the vine on this blog only yesterday. She went on to show me how strips of the vine had been used in the construction of the stand. You can see how they were used to tie fronds of palm leaves on the post to the left. The lady also confirmed that the vine is medicinal, as it is used to make tea for treatment of diarrhea. The thatching material for the roof and walls of the stand are from the fronds of the babaçu palm (Attalea speciosa).

Wild passion fruit continued

This is a better view of the two wild passion fruits shown in a previous post. Notice the remnants of flowers just above the fruit and the "mother" vine over to the left. I took this picture yesterday at approximately 15:00 hours. It was dark enough in the woods that I had to use the flash on my camera.

Passion flower and fruit

The area between the reception center and the entrance to the Bosque is a mass of vines and I dare say that most of them are of wild passion fruit (Passiflora sp). The production of passion flowers and fruit certainly doesn't match up with number of vines. Maybe because it's rather dark in this patch of woods. In the image you can see one flower and two passion fruits.

Wild passion fruit

In this image you can see the vines, buds and fruit on a secondary vine coming off an older vine. Down below you can see a larger vine yet. I wonder how old it is? It must take years to reach this size.

Pata de vaca, continued

Yet another variety of cow's foot. This one has a much larger leaf and it doesn't turn into a vine, like the one described in the previous post. But it becomes a small tree and produces very large, white flowers. I'm not sure, but I think this is the species that's used in the treatment of diabetes. It's said to produce vegetable insulin.

Pata de vaca

There are a number of different plants and small trees called pata de vaca (cow's foot). They are all of the genus, Bauhinia and at least one is used in the treatment of diabetes. The one in the attached image is noted for its transformation into a very large, leafless vine called escada de jabuti (tortoise's ladder, or monkey's ladder). It's always a favorite show and tell plant at Bosque Santa Lucia. Lower image by Robert Dalton.

Tarantula in the palm

I was pruning a Licuala grandis palm this week to find a tarantula between two fronds. Peek-a-boo! There was some evidence of web material, so I assume it is a young female preparing a home for her future family. Two days later I had another look to find that the tarantula was still there.

Soils, litter continued

I remember a visitor's comment that he couldn't understand why the tropical soils were so poor in nutrients. With so many leaves and other forest debris falling on the ground, why don't the soils become richer in organic materials? I don't have a scientific answer to explain the process but I know that as the rainy season gets under way, the litter on the ground begins to get compacted. By the end of the rainy season in July, there's very little left. The ground is almost bare! Where did it all go? For food, of course. Remember that once we get beyond the thin topsoil, there aren't many nutrients around from which the trees and other flora can feed on. Termites and microorganisms decompose the litter into a form that root systems can feed on it. The demand for food is so great in the dense tropical forest, very little, if any nutrients can be stockpiled. The forest is hungry!

Soils, litter

Most trees in the Amazon are deciduous, i.e., they lose their leaves at least once a year, normally during the dry season. Depending on aberrations of rainfall, it's common to see some species of trees putting on new leaves and then shedding them again as the dry season continues. The forest litter can be quite thick in September, especially under the Brazil nut trees. I find myself being more careful to look for snakes during these times because there could be anything among all those large, loose leaves. Image: Arthur Daniel Alexander.

Tropical soils, continued

Given that most tropical soils are lacking in nutrients, it only makes sense that trees don't waste a lot time putting down taproots. They send out surface feeders to consume the nutrients in the top soil. Sometimes we see very large roots snaking along the ground in pursuit of food. Clearly there are mattings of smaller roots underneath taking on this task. In this image you can see part of the root system of a tree that was blown over by the wind. No taproot, only surface feeders. The tree wasn't a small one, it must have been at least 25 meters high. Surface roots provide some stability for trees but not to the extent that taproots do. Maybe a comparison can be made between boats with keels. Deeper keels, as in sailboats, provide for much more stability than flat-bottomed boats.

Tropical soils

When we drive from Santarém to Bosque Santa Lúcia, we go from a tropical savanna environment to the Planalto (highland), where soils continue to be nutrient poor. The attached image is on BR-163, going up to the top of the hill where the Brazilian Army base, 8th-BEC, is located. This cut in the road is an excellent chance to see what our soils are all about. Some years ago I took the time to collect samples from every different layer of terrain from the top to the bottom. I ended up with more than 30 jars of samples in the approximately 120 meters in difference of altitude. Except for a very thin layer of organic soil at the top, the rest was made up of very poor soils of clays and sands rich in aluminum and ferric oxides. In some very isolated places there are also outcroppings of latterite rock, a reddish colored rock formed by millions of years of percolation of water through these minerals.

Jacarandá do Pará, seed pod

In earlier posts I have talked a lot about jacarandá do Pará (Dalbergia spruceana) as a tree and also as the source of a very expensive lumber that ends up in Frankfort, Germany for making musical instruments. I have a few of these trees planted at Bosque Santa Lúcia and one here at home in Santarém. I was surprised to see the one here at home producing seed. Not many, maybe half a dozen pods at the most. After checking the larger trees at the Bosque, I found that they are also producing a few bean pods. Hopefully they will be viable seeds, and hopefully, I'll remember to collect them for planting.

Licuala grandis

Licuala grandis is the name of this very popular palm, which is originally from the Soloman Islands. I say "popular" because occasionally I give friends a palm and when I let them choose, they make a beeline to Licuala grandis. The result is that I only have four left! I'm not sure how many of these palms are in this region of the Amazon. Not many, that's for sure. Mine are from seeds received from palm collector, Ricardo Assis in Rio de Janeiro, in September of 2003. The only other ones I've seen are at the airport in Belém. I look forward to the day when these licualas produce fruit. Even though the palms don't get more than three meters high, they produce long stems of bright orange/red fruit.

Roadside flowers

We're in the middle of our dry season and it's that time of the year when we see these very colorful flowers along the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway. They are called Flor-de-São-João, which translates into Saint John's flower. The scientific name of the plant is Pyrostegia venusta. The family is Bignoniaceae. It's a vine and it's native of Brazil. I'm not sure why the association with Saint John, except that the all-saints festivities in June are always very animated events with lots of square dancing, regional foods and participants dressed in colorful hillbilly clothes.