The Cecropia tree is one of my new favorite mintage .
When I visit the Torrid Zone a few years ago , I hear a large Cecropia Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree uprise in my friend ’s pastureland and asked what in the cosmos it was .
“ Bacano tree , ” he answer . “ you’re able to turn out them down again and again to feed the goat whenever you ’re brusque on forage . ”
I looked up at this screwball , Dr. Suessian tree diagram and wondered if it had any other exercise . “ Bacano ” is just one of the many names for these genus of fast - grow trees . Others let in
If you support to my YouTube channel , you belike saw the small telecasting from ECHO I posted a few weeks back where our tour guide was portion out some of the many employment of this incredible tree diagram .
Here ’s that spry video again :
Sandpaper , wood , animal fodder , eatable fruit , tobacco substitute , quick tint , melodic legal instrument , composting cloth , biomass for biochar … and it even hassome aesculapian uses .
It ’s fishy . the great unwashed complain about Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree dropping leaves all over their cubic yard … but at ECHO they consider the constant leaf drop as a plus .
As I write inCompost Everything : The Good Guide to Extreme Composting , it get a lot of sense to set fast - growing trees and plants just for the purpose of prepare compost . If you ’re in a tropic climate , the Cecropia tree diagram is a cracking choice .
I imagine it would make a big “ nurse tree ” for a tropic food woodland , providing nuance to untested Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree along with a flock of chop shot - and - drop cloth potentiality . The Cecropia tree is considered a “ pioneer species . ”
That intend it ’s one of the first plants to skip over into a charge - up spot , bringing new life to damage , eat at or burned orbit . Pioneer mintage grow speedily and help shade and restore the soil so more finicky long - term species can recall .
These are the sorts of trees you want at the beginning of a food forest .
When I start my next food forest , I ’ll be add up Cecropia .
As it is , we have a few large Cecropia Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and some little ace here and there on our newfangled homestead . Last week I tried some of the leaves as a baccy substitute in my trustyPeterson ’s briar pipeand find they taste much like a decent English tobacco portmanteau . Really good – much unspoilt than I anticipate , plus the smoke was quite smooth and non - irritating .
I examine chopping up a felled Cecropia in the George Bush with my machete and ascertain the Grant Wood to be very , very hard . The stems are hollow , which has give me some ideas for succeeding musical instrument …
… anyhow , as I state in the rubric , this is really a utile tree . It ’s a shame you ca n’t grow it in the temperate USA . I ’ll bet you could pull them off in parts of California , Florida , Texas , Arizona and most unquestionably Hawaii … but for those of you in New Jersey , Oregon , etc . , it ’s not going to occur except in an amazingly Brobdingnagian greenhouse . And if I had enough money for one of those , I ’d just move to someplace warmer .
