Hello family, friend etc.
I know it has been a long time but i have been very busy here. Last time I promised to take you down into a pit but first let’s talk about how some of these pits form. As a surface feature Florida is very young, just a baby landform. It was born roughly 10,000 years ago. The bedrock below Florida was formed under water by all sort of ancient marine or sea creatures like clams (fossil clam shells are everywhere). They would die and settle on the sea floor. Here they would become cemented together to form rocks. This happened over millions and millions of years so there are very thick deposits of these rocks. Ten thousand years ago sea level reached current levels and the rocks were exposed at the surface. Because Florida is so young, only a few inches of ‘dirt’ (wind blown sediments) have been deposited over these rocks. The rocks have a lot of calcium carbonate in them (baking soda is similar to calcium carbonate), which as rocks go will easily dissolve in water. It rains a lot in Florida! After a couple of thousand years of teeny-tiny bits of rock slowly dissolving and being wash out to sea, the remaining rock has lots of small holes and tunnels in them. Eventually the rock will not be strong enough to support itself and collapse to form a pit called a sinkhole.
I like that story, it is true but two things I should admit: 1) the pit we are going to visit is man-made. In the 1920’s they dug out the rocks to build some of the older buildings here. We have not planted anything interesting in the natural pits (just tree after tree after tree of avocado). So I’ll show you a man-made pit. 2) Rocks and soil particles slowly dissolving and getting washed out to sea is why the sea is salty!
People like to plant Fruit trees in these pits; the soil is better and the trees are protected from the wind. Usually we get more and bigger fruit from trees planted in sink holes than from trees planted above on the flats.
The first picture shows bedrock at the surface, just above a man-made pit. Picture two shows the pit wall with thousands of small holes created by water dissolving calcium carbonate in the rock. Picture three is fossilized sea creature (I tell people it is a sponge but I really don’t have a clue what it is). This rock was too cool to be used as a brick in a building so they put a bunch of these around a small garden in front of my old office.
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| Bedrock on surface |
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| bedrock along pit wall |
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| Fossilized sea creature |
This is the edge of our lychee and jackfruit pit. It is about ten to fifteen feet to the bottom.
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| Jackfruit Pit |
The first tree we will visit is Artocarpus heterophyllus or the jackfruit (picture below). The benefits of jackfruit were promoted Ashoka the Great of India (274 – 237 B.C.), the world’s most famous vegetarian. And why not promote jackfruit if you’re going to be called the Great? Jackfruit is the world’s largest fruit. The fruit can weigh up to 80 pounds and be 3 feet long. It is the main flavor component in juicy fruit chewing gum. Before old Ashoka the Great began telling people about how good jackfruit was, the king was called Ashoka the fairly mediocre.
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| (Artocarpus heterophyllus) Jackfruit |
The actual fruit is so large it grows directly on the trunk or branches big enough to support it.
And what story about south Florida would be complete without a palm tree?
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| Cocos nucifera (Red Spicata palm) |
According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden’s website
“The trunk is very strong and elastic, and is able to bend in heavy winds. In times of hurricanes the coconut palm has been a lifesaver. People lashing themselves to this flexible tree have avoided being swept out to sea. This palm is the most useful plant of the tropics. It is said that more uses are made of it than any other tree in the world. Besides drink, food and shade, it offers the possibilities of housing, thatching, hats, baskets, furniture, mats, cordage, clothing, charcoal, brooms, fans, ornaments, musical instruments, shampoo, containers, implements and oil for fuel, light, ointments, soap and more.“
You can read more about this palm at their website:
The last tree we will visit in our pit is the lychee (Litchi chinensis) from southern China. Fruit from this tree become ripe for only a short time in late spring. Under its leathery skin there is a clear (grape-like) sweet pulp. It is verrrrry tasty but only available for a short time (around June in Florida). As a result, in first century China the Emperor developed a version of the pony express to deliver fresh lychee to his wife. This variety is called Brewster, named after the Reverend W. N. Brewster a Methodist missionary who introduced it into the U.S. in 1903. In China they call it Chen Family Purple.
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| Lychee (Litchi chinensis) |
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| Lychee fruit |
Peal off the red skin and suck the clear pulp from around the large black seed.
Since it has been a very cold and snowy winter up north, next time we will look at how we protect tropical plants when it gets so bitterly cold the temperature drops below 40 degrees.
Goodby for now.
stewart
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