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June 29, 2005 A genus of trees that is very familiar to people living in most parts of Latin America, as well as those living in California, Hawaii, Florida and the southeastern states generally, is Erythrina. But it is probably unknown in most of the northern states. Erythrina belongs to the family Fabaceae of the order Fabales (bean-like, pod-bearing trees and shrubs). This of course puts them in the class Magnoliopsida, which means that they are dicots, like the majority of broadleaf plants. The common name of the whole genus is ‘coral trees’, but among the 130 species in the genus, sometimes just the important species, Erythrina cristi-galli, alone, is known as the ‘coral tree’. This is the case in Los Angeles when people say ‘coral tree’, where it is the official civic tree of the city of Los Angeles. More fully, this particular coral tree may be called the cockspur coral tree, with ‘cockspur’ being a mere calque of ‘crista-galli’. In Spanish, it is known as the ‘ceibo’. The blossom of the ceibo, which is of a deep, rich tangerine color, is the national flower of Argentina and Uruguay. The ceibo is not to be confused with the ceiba, a bombacaceous tree, known also as the floss-silk tree, about which I am intending to post an article in the near future. Here’s a coral blossom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CoralBeanFlower.jpg Another species that may be seen in Los Angeles is Erythrina caffra, also called Erythrina fusca. The common name is the ‘kaffirboom tree’, and the tree hails from South Africa, as the name suggests. There are specimens at the Los Angeles Arboretum and also in MacArthur Park on LA’s near-west side. The tree is very gnarled and thorny, so not especially pretty when out of bloom, but it is stunning when the papilionaceous (butterfly-shaped) flowers cover the crown almost entirely. Coral trees also have extensive roots that lie half-exposed, radiating outward almost as far as the branches. http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/72236 The name of the genus Erythrina comes from ancient Greek ‘erythros’ (red). The modern Greek word for ‘red’ is ‘kokkino’, but ‘erythros’ may still be in use too. To me, the adjectives ‘red’ and ‘coral’ are a little inaccurate. There’s a grove of coral trees in front of an office building on Wilshire Boulevard, near Palisades Park, in Santa Monica, that I saw in 2003, but to date I have not found them on Yahoo Images. What made them unmistakable was the saguaro-like anastomoses (configurations of branch-to-trunk junctions). Other noteworthy coral trees are Erythrina herbacea, the coral-bean tree, and Erythrina indica, the Indian coral tree. Usually it is very difficult and time-consuming to identify a tree that you have seen on the street or out in the country, unless it has some very distinctive feature that can be put into words very unambiguously. An example of an easy tree would be magnolia. Not knowing what magnolias are, I saw one in 2003 and wondered. But it has a red cone, something like a lacquered pine cone. Online, I conducted a search for ‘tree red cone’, and within minutes, I had identified the tree as Magnolia grandiflora. I had pictures of the leaves, the cones, the bark and the general aspect. Otherwise, there are only three ways. Ask someone who knows. Find one with a placard. Or spend hours and hours looking through images online or going through books in libraries looking at pictures. The third method was the one I used in order to identify coral trees. More often than not, you search in vain. This time I got lucky. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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