FROM THE ROOTS OF LEGEND AND LORE

A BELMONT LANDMARK STANDS TALL

FAMED AND FEARED, THE SILK COTTON TREE DEFIES A SENTENCE OF DEATH

 

Stories by Judy Raymond

Sunday Guardian

December 19, 1999

Page 10

 

The old silk cotton tree that stands at the corner of Belmont Circular Road may have been saved by its own supernatural powers.

 

Earlier this year, the tree, which grows near the bank of the Dry River, opposite the Alaska Café, provided refuge for a vagrant - the hollows between the buttresses, which grow from the trunk of the silk cotton tree, offer shelter from sun, wind and rain.

 

But some time in the past few months - no one is certain when - he repaid its hospitality by lighting a fire between two buttresses on the northeastern side of the tree.  The bark was charred to a height of about 30 feet.

 

The fire was the most recent in a series.  History enthusiast Jerry Besson, who keeps an eye on the tree, remembers that as long ago as last year, "One night I was coming out of Belmont and I saw the whole tree burning."

 

Besson went to the Belmont Police Station, a few hundred yards away, to report what the vagrant was doing.  "But they just said, 'Well, he kinda living there'…"

 

After the latest fire, the damaged tree seemed to be dying, and the management of the Hilton Trinidad, which maintains the area, arranged for it to be cut down on October 23.

 

"But the crane that was to have come to cut it down developed some problem," said Desmond Allum, adding with a laugh, "You know people ascribe supernatural powers to the silk cotton tree.  A Baptist woman called one of the security guards to say so, and he got frightened one time.  She told him, 'You can't cut down a silk cotton tree just so, you have to perform a ritual'."

 

Alum is the chairman of the Cotton Tree Foundation, which takes its name and its logo from that particular silk cotton tree.

 

The foundation, he explained, is a charity launched in 1993, while he was MP for Port of Spain North/St Ann's West, "because of the frustration of trying to get things done through the normal channels".  Alum and the other members of the foundation, who include Jackie Lazarus Megan Hopkyn-Rees, and Allison Hamel-Smith, work for the communities from St Ann's to the Dry River, with the aim of reducing poverty in the are, largely through educational projects.

 

Hopkyn-Rees formulated a mission statement for the foundation, said Allum, which "was based on the tree: its indomitable nature and its nurturing qualities".

 

So Allum was anxious to save the tree, and spent that Saturday morning waiting - in vain, as it turned out - for the workmen who were due to cut it down, hoping that he could stop them.

 

Then he called in Steven Leemoon, assistant conservator of forests with the forestry Division, who examined the tree and said it could be saved.  The Hilton agreed not to cut it down, and since then has been helping to finance the campaign to save the tree.

 

The tree doesn't look very healthy.  Apart from the scorched bark where the fire was set, its foliage is sparse, and many of the branches on the east and north sides have been lopped off.  But Leemoon is confident that it will survive.

 

"The silk cotton tree is one of the fastest-regenerating trees in the Caribbean, once it's given its silviculture requirements," he said, pointing out that already there are two good signs: the tree has sprouted not only a crop of new, bright green leaves, but also flower buds.

 

"After the fire," he explained, "the tree went into a state of shock, a sort of hibernation that made it drop its leaves.  The bark was destroyed and its capacity to uptake water and nutrition flow was restricted."

 

Since Leemoon started treating the tree at the end of October, the branches have been pruned, for safety, and the stumps of the limbs sealed off to prevent infection.

 

Each week Leemoon applies hormones to the roots to stimulate root growth, and fertilizers for stem and leaf growth.  Last weekend he applied hormones to the trunk to help the bark heal.

 

"The recovery rate will slow down during the dry season," he predicted, but forecast that by July or August next year the tree should put on a full coat of new leaves.

 

Leemoon was touched and surprised by the concern expressed by passers-by who see him working on the tree.  He too has been warned about its powers: "I was told you have to say prayers before touching it."

 

But the wounded giant has responded rapidly and gratefully to Leemoon's treatment, and he sees only one possible obstacle to its recovery: a leak from the salt-water mains that feed a nearby fire hydrant.  "Salt water," Leemoon warns, "is high in sodium and may lead to reverse osmosis, which will draw water out of the tree."

 

Leemoon is hoping that the authorities will repair the leak soon.  Otherwise, once again the old silk cotton tree may have to fall back on its own spiritual powers to ward off a threat to its survival.

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REVERED BY RADAS, A WITNESS TO HISTORY

 

Sunday Guardian

December 19, 1999

Page 11

 

The Belmont tree is a survivor from the forest of huge silk cotton trees that once covered the plain that stretches from the St Ann's hills to the sea, says amateur historian Jerry Besson.

 

It was because of this forest that the area where Port of Spain now stands was called Cumucurapo, "the place of the silk cotton trees", a name recorded as "Conquerabia" by the European invaders.

 

Besson also notes: "Collens tells in his Guide (to Trinidad, 1886) a story that many generations of tribal people tested their warrior youth there, but (the first Spanish Governor) Sedeno or someone put a stop to that after they banded together to fight the Spaniards.

 

"Picton, in the hysteria generated by the French planters about slave uprisings, cut down most of (the silk cotton trees) because they were places where practitioners of native arts associated."

 

This tree may not date quite as far back as the days of Thomas Picton, who was the British governor of Trinidad from 1797 to 1802; but in an 1898 photograph of it in Besson's book A Photograph Album of Trinidad at the turn of the 19th Century, the tree is fully grown.  Steven Leemoon says it takes 60 to 70 years for a silk cotton tree to reach maturity, so he estimates that it may be as much as 180 years old.  It's only an estimate, he stresses, because he hasn't taken a core sample, and in any case the rings in tropical trees are harder to distinguish than those of trees in temperate climates.

 

Besson says the tree is mentioned in Charles Kingsley's At Last - A Christmas in the West Indies, which describes his 1869 visit.

 

In addition, says Besson, "From the 1850s, when the free Africans came, the tree was held in high regard by the Radas of Belmont Valley Road.  Andrew Carr collected stories about the tree and the cult of Damballah, the great snake god.  He was a member of the Rada community, and a direct descendant of Papa Nanee (the Dahomeyan founder of the cult)."

 

Besson interviewed Carr, a folklorist, before his death in the 1970s and recorded his stories about the tree (see "A tall tale of the tree", page 12).

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HEROMYTH OF THE JUMBIE TREE

FROM GANG GANG SARA TO A 90s VAGRANT AND FIRE FIEND

 

Sunday Guardian

December 19, 1999

Page 12

 

The silk cotton tree (ceiba pentandra) grows to a height of 70 feet or more.  The diameter of its crown can be as much as 140 feet, making it an excellent shade tree for those brave enough to loiter under it.

 

The silk cotton tree was revered by the Amerindian inhabitants of the Caribbean.  Sir Philip Sherlock, in his West Indian Folk Tales, tells a Carib myth of the first "coomacka tree", which provided food for mankind.

 

The tree is found not only throughout the Caribbean, but also in West Africa and the East Indies, whence comes the name "kapok" for the fibres of its fruit, which are used for stuffing cushions.  (Hence the name o the Kapok Hotel and its site at Cotton Hill, St Clair.)

 

The leaves and bark of the tree can be used medicinally, and the wood has been used to make coffins, cricket bats and, much earlier, canoes: ceiba, one of the Spanish names for the tree, comes from the Carib name for canoe.

 

But as John Rashford recorded in the Jamaica Journal, writing on "The Cotton Tree and the Spiritual Realm in Jamaica", throughout the New World, people of African descent have looked on the silk cotton tree with reverence and fear.  In some Caribbean countries it is known as the "god tree" or the 'devil's tree"; in Guyana it is the jumbie tree.

 

Rashford traces its association with the spiritual realm back to Africa.  Snakes are important in African traditional religion, and some snakes lay eggs or sleep under silk cotton trees.  That would explain, too, the tree's importance to the Rada cult of Belmont, who connected it with the snake god Dangbwe or Damballah.

 

The tremendous size and long life of the silk cotton tree also added to its mystique.  The Halfway Tree, which gave its name to a district of Kingston, was a silk cotton tree, which dated from before the British conquest of 1655, and survived until the late 19th century.

 

Gang Gang Sara, the African witch, climbed a silk cotton tree in Les Coteaux, Tobago, to fly back to Africa.  She forgot that she could no longer fly, because she had eaten salt.  So instead she lies buried between the roots of the tree.

 

There are 19th-century reports of the belief that silk cotton trees can move about and gather together, and the tree is sometimes said to have a soul or to be the home of a spirit.  But it is most closely associated with the souls of the dead, who live in its roots and branches.

 

In Jamaica it was said that the Spanish would bury treasure under a silk cotton trees, then kill the slave who hurried it, so that his spirit would guard the treasure, and no one would dare dig for it.

 

Obeahmen would cast a spell by driving a nail into a silk cotton tree, then call on an evil spirit to order the victim's soul to leave his body and live in the tree.

 

That is why, before cutting a silk cotton tree, you should pour a libation on its roots.  It is advisable also to make an offering of corn or sacrifice a chicken.

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A TALL TALE OF THE TREE

 

Sunday Guardian

December 19, 1999

Page 12

 

Jerry Besson says Andrew Carr told him this story about the silk cotton tree at the corner of Belmont Circular Road.

 

"Charlie Lastigue was coming home on his bike one night and as he was passing by the tree, he heard a baby crying.  When he went to look, because he fast, there was a little black baby lying naked in the grass under the tree.

 

"So he picked it up to take it home (he was living on Basilon Street in those days) to show his wife and next day take it to the orphanage or the hospital - and got back on his bike.

 

"Well, by the time he reached Memorial Park the baby was so heavy he could hardly pedal, and when he reached the corner of Belmont Circular Road by the hospital, the baby had grown and was even heavier.

 

"When he reached St Ann's Church of Scotland the baby said to him, in a man's voice, with a Bajan accent, 'Look here, you better put me back where you found me'.

 

"So he turned round and pedaled back, the baby growing lighter and lighter as he went, and as he bent to put down the baby, a cloud covered the moon and a huge bird - Charlie said it was the biggest bird he'd ever seen - flew out of the tree directly into the cemetery in the middle of the Savannah."

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Express

February 15, 2000

Page 3

LANDMARK FALLS

The huge old silk-cotton tree at the corner of Belmont Circular Road and Queen's Park East is no more. The tree, a Port of Spain landmark said to be about 150 years old, came crashing down yestrday morning, according to the Belmont police, blocking Belmont Circular Road and damaging the cafe across the road.

 

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