Exploring the world of gardening. Observations, gardens to visit, thoughts on ecology, gardener interviews, and commentary.
In August 1979 a massive hurricane hit the small island of Dominica, devastating just about everything in its path including homes, roads, crops, trees, and even leaving mountaintops bare.
Amazingly, in the wake of all of that destruction, the hurricane left behind a new plant, Spathoglottis plicata, an Asian ground orchid that can now be seen all over the island. It was named David’s orchid to remember the hurricane that brought it.
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Can you believe the size of this thing? Me neither. I have not seen a euphorbia of this size before or since.
This photo was taken at the Andromeda Botanic Gardens in Bathsheba, Barbados.
Euphorbia make up a very large and diverse genus of plants, but because of the size I believe this plant may be one of the tree euphorbia (e. abyssinica, etc) that we North Americans commonly grow as houseplants. We have two in our bedroom; ailing plants that Davin bought from a corner store years ago, repotted, and nursed back to health. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, they will never grow to be more than a tiny fraction of the size of this tree.
One of the many things I brought back from this trip (or the Barbados portion of it anyways) was a new respect and appreciation for euphorbias. Now to find myself a nice Euphorbia lactea for my collection.
Here’s an encore minus the cheesy tourist.
My epic trip has come to an end and I’ve been back in the freezing north for a few days. Brrr…. It’s time now to begin processing the experience for myself as well as find a way to express on this site some of what I have learned and experienced.
Boy did I learn a lot. I may have spent a whole month away, but it never quite felt like I was taking a break. The trip was more comparable to enrolling in an intense immersive learning program. With my brain so filled with new experiences, thoughts and feelings, I lamented on Twitter yesterday, “Where to begin?”
Some of you responded, “With the beginning” but I am having a hard time deciding where that is. Which beginning? I’ve never been very good about pinpointing where a life experience begins and ends. Did it begin when I got on the plane and arrived in Barbados? Or perhaps the part that felt like the real beginning to the personal journey, flying into Dominica. Do I begin with a specific plant that intrigued me (they all did!) or try to express my overall impressions of the trip? Should I stay focused on the botanical portion of the trip or allow myself to veer off into non-botanical terrain and tell a larger story?
And just what is the larger story? I don’t quite know yet. The trip was both what I expected and yet mostly filled with surprises.
Perhaps it is a cop out, but I’ve decided to begin randomly. I literally clicked on a folder of digital images and pulled up the first photo that brought up a memory. If I didn’t begin this way, I’d probably never begin and an entire month of travel would go the way of Cuba and so many other travel experiences I’ve had.
I took the above photos about a week or so into the Dominica portion of the trip. Travel around the island can be a bit gnarly. While the island isn’t particularly big, winding, thin and sometimes rough mountain roads increases the distance between places. In Dominica you are always going up or down but very rarely straight or flat. For this reason we decided to book a few nights in Calibishie, a small village on the northeast side of the island so we could do some walking and exploring at our own pace.
Dominica is not the place to go if you’re looking for a sandy beach vacation. We could see the ocean from the little cottage we rented above Roseau, on the west side of the island, but it was a 3 hour walk to the closest beach, which was rocky, not sandy. Staying in the northeast also gave us closer access to ocean swimming.
Our second day in Calabishie fell on a Sunday. Local buses don’t run on Sundays in Dominica and we don’t drive so we decided to try and walk through the village and see if we could make it to the closest sandy beach in that direction, or find somewhere to dip into the ocean if it got too hot. The people of Calabishie were very friendly and inquisitive, quick to find out who we were and chat. We stopped many times to take photos or get into conversations with locals.
The last stop we made before leaving the village was when the guy in this picture, Stevie (not Wonder) called out from his porch for us to take his picture. Turns out Stevie is a farmer and a gardener so I asked him to show me what he had growing around his house.
That’s dasheen (Colocasia esculenta) in the foreground, one of many ground provisions that were originally brought to the West Indies as food for slaves. As you can probably tell by the leaves, dasheen is related to taro. You’ll find it growing just about everywhere in Dominica. The young, unfurled leaves are harvested for a soup or stew called callaloo, and the roots (or corms) are typically served boiled.
That huge bush behind it is a hot seasoning pepper. It looked to be some type of habanero/scotch bonnet, but I was too chicken to taste it. I never saw a mature hot pepper plant in the Caribbean that was smaller than this bush. Some were larger still. I understand now why the scotch bonnet types require such a long growing season to get to the fruiting stage. The plants we grow here just don’t have a chance.
The third edible Stevie had growing was a small tangerine. It didn’t have any fruit yet, but the spines were a good inch and a half long, the largest (and scariest) I have seen on a citrus tree.
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If I had to describe Dominica’s flora with one word, I think I would choose “giant.” Or possibly “huge.”
“Lush” is a good word but I’m not sure it can convey the kind of extreme lushness I am talking about. This isn’t North American lush, this is rainforest, tons of water and heat, things just grow and never stop growing kind of lush. This is plants covering every surface that isn’t moving lush.
The reason I chose “giant” is because not only is it extremely lush, but many of the plants are super-sized. We flew into Dominica about a week ago, arriving on the east coast, and were quickly introduced to the island’s lushness and hugeness by a rapid-fire drive through the interior to the west side. The bamboo we saw along the way were the biggest bamboo I have ever seen in my life. By far! Ferns of all types and sizes, many of which I can not identify completely covered the roadside cliffs. Tree-sized ferns are so commonplace here I’m already feeling a sense of normalcy about seeing them.
Along the way, I remarked to the driver that there was so much of interest growing, I couldn’t tell where cultivation ended and wildness began. The way he put it, just about everything is wild. Here it seems to be less about coaxing things to grow, and more about taming the growth you don’t want.
Imagine the weeding!
Here I am holding up a thick bamboo stalk I found laying on the side of a path. This is not the thickest bamboo I saw. Not by a long shot.
Davin found this gigantic seedpod lying underneath a tree. I’m sorry I can’t identify the tree, but can you believe the size of that pod?
Check out the size of this tree fern frond in comparison to my size. And no, I’m not wearing a cowboy hat, it’s just the way the hat is cocked in the photo. Sadly, I lost my second best hat two days ago and have been reduced to wearing the third best backup.
This is Davin holding a bunch of bananas. They are surprisingly heavy. I have a newfound respect for banana growers. HARD WORK.
Depending on where you are, you can find giant tillandsia filling many of the trees here. You will also find several that have fallen to the ground. Every time I see one I just can’t believe it. There they are, these plants I love, just laying there on the ground like it’s no big deal.
Here’s a photo of me taking a Polaroid of the same tillandsia for scale. HUGE!
And holding a smaller plant that had also fallen to the ground.
This massive thing is the spent flower stalk. With that kind of weight, it’s no wonder the thing fell out of the tree!
And finally, a perfect tillandsia log, all ready to go. It makes me laugh to imagine the work we put into achieving this effect at home (think floral wires and constant spritzing) when you can just pick one up off the ground here.
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Sorrel or rum punch (sorrel spiked with rum) is a popular, refreshing drink in the Caribbean, especially during the holiday season.
Knowing this, I was particularly excited to get to the market and get my hands on some fresh sorrel so that I could find out how the drink compares when the flower calyces are fresh rather than dried.
In my minds eye I imagined market tables piled high with bright red blooms. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Instead the fresh flowers seem to be sold in bagged portions. It’s only day one as I am writing this (you will read this a few days later) so I’m holding out hope that there is a market stand somewhere on the island where the blooms are beautifully display instead of bagged.
The good news is that the flower calyces I bought were still fresh and crisp inside the bag. I paid about $2 EC (roughly $.80 US) for about 5-6 cups of flowers.
Turns out they make the most incredibly colourful, intense, and tangy drink. It’s so much more vibrantly red than the drink I make with dried flowers at home.
And look at the colour of the calyces when they are removed from the liquid!
It might be difficult to go back to dried next summer.
Here’s my standard recipe and the one I made today, but with so many tropical fruits and fresh spices available here I’m thinking of experimenting with some flavour combinations.
Do you have a favourite hibiscus/sorrel/rum punch/agua de jamaica recipe? Please share it.
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