Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 22, 2018 News
With a variety of uses, it is no wonder that the Ité Palm tree is identified by many as “the tree of life’.
The tree, according to PhD Candidate in Environmental Biology at the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies, Linton Arneaud, is known throughout South America, and is certainly no stranger to Guyana. In fact, he has been able to uncover that the tree is one that has been used by Amerindian communities for many centuries.
The Trinidadian can speak to this state of affairs, since he is currently conducting a study titled: ‘Post – dispersal seed predation in Mauritia flexosa: a Trinidad-Guyana comparison’ which has seen him analysing Ité palm trees. The study, he disclosed, started in July 2017 and will end in June of this year.
But according to Arneaud, he was inspired to share his study with the Guyanese public since during his study he recognised that some people did not recognise the importance of the palm tree.
“I just noticed that palms are being cut down here unsustainably and I wanted to educate persons how to maintain populations for future use,” he informed.
According to Arneaud, the Ité palm tree is one that is utilised in all areas of life for food, shelter, medicine, religion, recreation and comfort. The pulp, he explained, is used for making a variety of juices, candies, and flour which is in fact one of the main staples in the diet of indigenous tribes. The leaf fibres or tibisiri, are used to make thatch, clothes, jewellery, cosmetic products and a wide variety of household items including hammocks, furniture, warishis [backpacks] carpets and baskets.
The outer section of its stems, according to Arneaud, are well known for making canoes, bridges and planks, while the inner soft edible tissues in the centre are used as a starch for making breads and cakes.
On a regional scale, Ité palm’s ecosystem has a high ecological, economical, medicinal, pharmaceutical and cosmetic importance, Arneaud related.
During the centuries, he disclosed that naturally fallen palm-trees were very important to indigenous communities, as wild beetles known as Rhychophorus palmarumlay laid eggs inside the palm’s stem, which in-turn hatched into larvae that fed on the dead tissues.
“Today we refer to the beetle larva as ‘Tecoma or Otocumba worms’ which is one of the highlights during Amerindian Heritage Month celebrations,” Arneaud was able to ascertain.
But sadly, he was also able to uncover that “unlike our ancestors, we do not wait for Ité Palms to fall naturally or die. Instead we cut them down and prepare ‘openings’ all over the trunk for wild beetles to lay eggs.” This process, he informed, is called ‘Setting Tecoma’ and takes place within a period of one to two months before the Amerindian Heritage festivities.
But according to the doctoral candidate, the lifespan of Ité palms is well over a century.
“It is well over 100 years, and it is not free of consequences…every time a tree is cut down in order to ensure the persistence of the species, we need to practice sustainable harvesting techniques. The first truth we need to appreciate about them is that they are dioecious or single-sex. Many people, I am sure, are not aware of this, as one can only tell the differences during the fruiting season, as male palm trees only produce flowers and not fruits,” Arneaud said.
Villagers, he said, are known to cut selected trees closer to their villages, paying no attention to the sex. Currently, he observed, villagers are even forced to go further into the forest in search of favourable palm trees. But according to him, if villagers unintentionally continue to cut down female palms, “this will lead to a massive problem in the near future, as palm populations would not be able to sustain themselves.”
Another important fact about these trees that Arneaud believes is worth sharing is that seedlings and young juveniles, in some cases, are not resistant to fire. Arneaud chose to highlight this, since according to him, “It is known that villagers burn palm ranges during the dry season as a form of pasture management. However, every time this is done, all seedlings are destroyed.”
While the burning does not immediately threaten adult Ité palm populations [as burning also stimulates seeds to fall and germinate], the problem that exists, according to Arneaud, is when palm trees are burnt year after year thereby depriving seedlings of a chance to survive.
The consequence, he disclosed, will be “50 years from now, most populations existing near villages would either be too young to reproduce or sustainably service the needs of the people.”
But the good news, according to Arneaud, is that all is not lost. This is in light of the fact, he said, that simple effective management practices, once enforced properly, can ensure the species continues to thrive and by extension allow for the traditional hosting of Amerindian Heritage Month.
It is therefore Arneaud’s firm belief that education through sustainability is the only way to preserve the traditions embraced by the Amerindian people during their month of celebration.
Moreover, Arneaud pointed out that the onus is on Chiefs and Captains of Amerindian villages to ensure that palm trees are marked during fruiting seasons, in order to differentiate sexes. Added to this, he said that one to two male trees should be left facing the prevailing winds to allow for pollination of surrounding females [about 20-25 trees]. At the least, he revealed, there should be at least one to two male palms within every 200 square metres.
“The benefit of this management strategy is that the Ité palm sex ratios would be 1:1, meaning that villagers will still have more than enough male palms [20-25 trees] to set Tecoma,” Arneaud related.
Added to this, he noted that “setting fire to palm trees should not be a problem once it is done every three to five years. This will provide seedlings and young juveniles with sufficient time to transit into older juveniles allowing them to develop their root systems”.
As such, he urges that persons opt to choose palm trees strategically, and not conveniently.
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