Category: Biodiversity

This is one of the slow starters here — going on ten years counting the pot years, and still catching up to trees that went in the ground yesterday. The Basics Chuo ume is a cultivar of Prunus mume, the Japanese apricot (often just called “ume”), in the rose family, Rosaceae, the same family as…

Chico sapote, aka sapodilla, sent me down a rabbit hole into chewing gum history that I did not expect from a fruit tree. The Basics Chico sapote, or sapodilla, Manilkara zapota, is originally from Central America but was carried to the Philippines by Spanish traders and spread across Asia from there. It’s in the Sapotaceae…

Cinnamon gave us one of the better all around days of the whole project, one that had nothing to do with planting at all and everything to do with actually using what we’d grown. The Basics Cinnamon comes from the inner bark of Cinnamomum trees, most commonly Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum cassia depending on the…

Clove went in as part of building out our spice collection rather than as a tree with its own dedicated day, so I don’t have a great personal story attached to this one yet. The Basics Clove, Syzygium aromaticum, is native to the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, historically known as the Spice Islands. Origin and…

Coffee was one of the plantings I did with real intention instead of curiosity — eight trees isn’t a lot on its own, but it was meant to be a start toward growing enough to cover our own habit instead of buying it. That plan hit a real setback. The Basics Coffee, Coffea canephora, known…

Cousin of cacao, and one of the few South American fruits that actually rang a bell when I asked some Brazilian friends about the strange stuff we’re growing — most of what we plant they’d never heard of, but cupuassu and jaboticaba they knew right away. The Basics Cupuassu, Theobroma grandiflorum, is a close cousin…

Small, useful, and never dramatic — this one shows up on the running species count more as a kitchen tree than anything else. The Basics Curry leaf, Murraya koenigii, is a small tree or shrub in the citrus family, Rutaceae, native to South Asia, putting it in the same family as our kafir lime and…

Showy flowers and glossy leaves earned this one a spot right by the house, where we’d actually see it every day. The Basics Cut nut, Barringtonia edulis, is a tree in the Lecythidaceae family — the same family that includes the cannonball tree and Brazil nut. Origin and Habitat It’s native to Vanuatu, Fiji, and…

Kind of a strange honor to have this one growing here at all — it’s critically endangered in the wild and basically nobody grows it outside its native range. The Basics Duguetia peruviana is an unusual relative of soursop and cherimoya, in the family Annonaceae. The genus Duguetia has around 90 species, most from Central…

Got fried in a pot in the hot sun once and made a comeback anyway, which I appreciate in a plant. The Basics Duranta, also called golden dewdrop, is a flowering shrub, Duranta erecta, in the verbena family, Verbenaceae. Origin and Habitat Native to Mexico, the Caribbean, and parts of South America, it’s since spread…