Daily Botanical

If you will for a moment direct your gaze over to the right of this text you should see a new feature added to the site called “Daily Botanical.”

Everyday, barring weekends, vacations, sickness, power-outages, personal laziness, natural disasters, and unforeseen events, I will be posting a different botanical photograph taken by yours truly. I take thousands of plant photos throughout the year that either sit as a piece of film or a file on my computer but never see the light of day. I figured it was time to do something about that. Photography is a huge part of my daily life, both personal and professional that I have been withholding from the site to some degree for no logical reason that I can think of other than that I just didn’t think about it.

So there you have it. Special thanks to Mr. Davin Risk who quietly endured the headache of making it all function while I sat in the sidelines eating chips.

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Flowering Aloe Vera

Photo by Gayla Trail

Found growing on the beach outside Santiago de Cuba. Sunburn relief is conveniently located within arm’s reach!

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Screw Pine (Pandanus utilis)

Photo by Gayla Trail

If you’ve been to a tropical country you have probably come into contact with one of the many species of this tree, the Pandanus or Screw Pine. Although not a pine but commonly named for the spiral growth of the leaves, this tree is not native to Cuba but is often planted in tropical countries due to it’s strong fibres that are extremely useful for making ropes, weaving clothing, hats and all sorts of helpful items. It has medicinal uses too although I am not sure what they are.

Photo by Gayla Trail

Our first sighting of a Pandanus was in the Jardin Gran Piedre, a botanical garden and former coffee plantation located high up in the Sierra Maestra mountains. [I will write more about this garden in the future.] The tree was a female and covered in large, interesting fruit, leading us to spend several minutes speculating on what it could be, our guesses almost completely uneducated and based on absolutely no experience whatsoever. We love to do that; pretend like we’re really knowledgeable about things we’ve never seen in our lives and possibly have a clue. We concluded it had to be some kind of breadfruit-like plant until our guide intervened revealing the plant’s name and explaining that the fruit is inedible to humans.

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Aerial roots grow down from high up in the tree functioning as prop anchors holding up the heavy, fruit-laden top of the tree during stormy weather.

Photo by Gayla Trail
Another photo of the first tree showing the prop roots. Apparently soil and plant matter is trapped in the roots making the plant a good erosion preventer.

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A Pandanus flower

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