Salt

Breadfruit

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Artocarpus altilis
Region of origin: Malesia and Pacific region

Quotations:

"It had days they wanted to just sit down under a breadfruit tree and cool off, to reach up and pick a ripe mango off the tree and eat it." (page 6)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 567, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Breadnut (also known as chaitagne)

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Artocarpus camansi
Region of origin: Malesia and Pacific region

Quotations:

"Food: paratha and buss-up shot with delicacies from chataigne and baigan and bhaji to feed the whole of Cunaripo and Cascadu." (page 110)


Botanical reference: Laura B Roberts-Nkrumah, “Fruit and Seed Yields in Chataigne (Artocarpus Camansi Blanco) in Trinidad and Tobago and Tobago,” Fruits 60 (2005): 387–88, https://doi.org/10.1051/fruits:2005044.

Coconut

Number of times mentioned: 15
Latin name: Cocos nucifera
Region of origin: Malesia and Pacific Region coastal regions

Hermann Adolph Köhler, Cocos Nucifera, 1887, Coloured plate, Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 3., http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:666160-1.


Quotations:

"This was one of the beginnings of the story that Uncle Bango sat down that year to tell, that had me looking out for him to complete each Saturday when he stopped by our house on his way from the market where he went to sell the toy steeldrum sets he made from bits of wire and condensed-milk tins and the heads he sculptured out of dried coconuts, the bare brown fibres for the face, the eyes red beads, the moustaches and eyebrows painted green or black or red as his fancy, each head wearing a crown or an arrangement of feathers fabricated from the images of the warriors and kings that he said had come to him in his dreams." (5)

"The more they flourished, the more she seemed to wilt, and she walked around the house, baked aloes tied to her swollen feet, her limbs greased with a mixture of nutmeg and soft candle and coconut oil, her head bound with a cloth soaked in the juice of fresh limes, wearing two, sometimes three dresses, one over the other, and one of Dixon's old jackets over them all to keep from freezing." (page 8)

"[...] Cunaripo, the town: with the police station and the Catholic church and the Warden's office its major buildings, with a Scale House for weighing canes and an Ice Box for selling ice and a Buying House where farmers from surrounding estates brought bags of polished cocoa beans and dried coffee to be weighed and exchanged for money and then to be shipped by rail to Port-of-Spain, the port where they all led, the train lines and the ribbons of road, streaming through forest, along sea coasts, joining plantation to plantation, coconuts and cocoa and cane, until they reached the port from which ships sailed out to England, out into the world, the world, already to him more than a place, a mission, a Sacred Order that brought him into meaning, into Life." (page 16)

"And behind him, these poor little boys, their hands swinging in every direction, some heads turned to the left, some heads to the right, people applauding because they so astonished and amazed that this man with nothing to his name, no house, no land, the little money that he get coming from sculpting heads from dry coconuts and little trinkets from dried coconut shells, would from his own pocket outfit these boys and bring them, uninvited, into this big Independence march." (page 25)

"University scientists came with plans and programmes for feeding the people of the nation from the coconut palm, and from bananas, banana rice, banana flour, banana sugar [...]." (page 43)

"He went into Woodford Square, walking through the grandest guard of honour ever assembled for anybody in this country, the line stretching from the Singer entrance on Frederick Street right up to the podium, the whole country gathered there, the place looking and smelling like Trinidad and Tobago, market women in Shouters' headdress, smelling of red lavender and rosewater, vendors of paratha roti in orhnis, about them the scent of fresh coconut oil and burnt geera, clapping hands and shaking tambourines; stevedores with flags in their huge fists and towels draped over their formidable shoulders, nurses in grey stockings and starched aproned uniforms, vagrants in their Sunday best, soapbox politicians with their fingers on their lips, choirs of schoolchildren, oyster vendors and sugarcane workers, and a contingent of supporters from the opposition parties." (page 57)

"Early on mornings he jogged around the Savannah in a red, white and black tracksuit marked Trinidad &Tobago, stopping at the completion of his run at a coconut cart to drink a coconut water, light jelly, standing there jumping on the spot as his coconut was cut and other early-morning joggers pointed him out slyly [...]." (page 63)

"One morning Alford had finished jogging and was at the coconut cart waiting for the coconutman to cut a light jelly for him [...]." (page 64)

"Outside the yard was planted with bougainvillea trees and red hibiscus fencing, orchids were growing on tree stumps, ixora plants, a calabash tree and two coconut trees near enough to string a hammock in between, guava tree near the latrine and some julie mango trees." (page 70)

"He came home from work promptly and occupied himself with the making of his earrings, curios and jewellery from dried coconuts and dry coconut shells." (page 78)

"He remembered the silence of the evening he saw his brother Noble, just sixteen, standing with this big straw hat on his head and the big soldier boots on his feet, his eyes huge and serene as if he was looking out a window at the whole huge world, and their mother sitting on the bed in the small room, smelling of coconut oil and rosemary, of ginger and sleep [...]." (page 83)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 75, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Dasheen

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Colocasia esculenta
Region of origin: Tropical Asia, Malesia, and Pacific

Quotations:

"In the swampy part he planted dasheen, and on the rest he planted okro and corrailli and bodi beans." (page 108)



Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 60-61, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Eggplant (also known as baigan)

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Solanum melongena
Region of origin: India, China

Quotations:

"Food: paratha and buss-up shot with delicacies from chataigne and baigan and bhaji to feed the whole of Cunaripo and Cascadu." (110)

"He spent his time on the platform talking about birdcages and bamboo and wood, about corraili and bhaji and baigan, about scrubbing- boards and dog chains, so that the majority of people walked away from his meetings and those who remained did so only because they felt entertained by his utterances." (110)



Botanical reference: Sandra Knapp, Maria S. Vorontsova, and Jaime Prohens, “Wild Relatives of the Eggplant (Solanum Melongena L.: Solanaceae): New Understanding of Species Names in a Complex Group,” PLOS ONE 8, no. 2 (February 22, 2013): e57039, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057039.

Ginger

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Zingiber officinale
Region of origin: Southeast Asia


Commissioned by William Roxburgh, Zingiber Officinale Roscoe, n.d., watercolour illustration, n.d., http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:798372-1.


Quotations:

"He remembered the silence of the evening he saw his brother Noble, just sixteen, standing with this big straw hat on his head and the big soldier boots on his feet, his eyes huge and serene as if he was looking out a window at the whole huge world, and their mother sitting on the bed in the small room, smelling of coconut oil and rosemary, of ginger and sleep [...]." (83)





Botanical reference: P. N. Ravindran and K. Nirmal Babu, Ginger: The Genus Zingiber (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016), 7.

Ixora

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Ixora coccinea
Region of origin: Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam

Quotations:

"Outside the yard was planted with bougainvillea trees and red hibiscus fencing, orchids were growing on tree stumps, ixora plants, a calabash tree and two coconut trees near enough to string a hammock in between, guava tree near the latrine and some julie mango trees." (70)


Botanical reference: “Ixora Coccinea,” Conservatory Of Flowers, 2019, https://conservatoryofflowers.org/bloom/ixora-coccinea/.

Lime

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Citrus x aurantifolia
Region of origin: India, Myanmar, Malaysia

Quotations:

"The more they flourished, the more she seemed to wilt, and she walked around the house, baked aloes tied to her swollen feet, her limbs greased with a mixture of nutmeg and soft candle and coconut oil, her head bound with a cloth soaked in the juice of fresh limes, wearing two, sometimes three dresses, one over the other, and one of Dixon's old jackets over them all to keep from freezing." (8)

"[...] Miss Myrtle watching on helpless as the girl settled deeper into that world from which she found herself increasingly unwilling to pluck her, continuing to make her dresses for someone younger, as if she also needed to keep her a child that much longer, giving her the cut halves of yellow lime to rub under her armpits to erase the wild perfume of greenwood-fire smoke and forest moss fermenting there and on her skin [...]." (77)




Botanical reference: “Citrus Aurantiifolia (Lime),” CAB International, 2021, https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/13438.

Mustard

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Sinapis alba
Region of origin: Europe, Africa, and Asia

Hermann Adolph Köhler, Sinapsis Alba, 1887, Coloured plate, 1887, Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 3, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:288952-1.


Quotations:

"Nearby, the girls are skipping rope, screaming, as they turn the rope faster and faster: ‘Salt ... Vinegar ... Mustard ... Pepper ... Pepper, pepper!’" (36)




Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 177, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Nutmeg

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Myristica fragrans
Region of origin: Malesia


Hermann Adolph Köhler, Myristica Fragrans, 1887, Coloured plate, 1887, Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 2, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:586076-1.


Quotations:

"The more they flourished, the more she seemed to wilt, and she walked around the house, baked aloes tied to her swollen feet, her limbs greased with a mixture of nutmeg and soft candle and coconut oil, her head bound with a cloth soaked in the juice of fresh limes, wearing two, sometimes three dresses, one over the other, and one of Dixon's old jackets over them all to keep from freezing." (page 8)



Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 575-576, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Okra

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Abelmoschus esculentus
Region of origin: Southern Asia


Commissioned by William Roxburgh, Hibiscus Longifolius Willd., n.d., Watercolour illustration, n.d., http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:558006-1.


Quotations:

"In the swampy part he planted dasheen, and on the rest he planted okro and corrailli and bodi beans." (page 108)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 496, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Orange

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Citrus sinensis
Region of origin: China, India, Myanmar

Quotations:

"Maybe if Gandhi drank only water, then he would drink only orange juice." (41)

"‘OK, OK,’ Villaroel said. ‘Drink orange juice. What you wearing?’" (41)





Botanical reference: Julia F Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates, ed. Curtis F. Dowling (Miami, FL: Julia F. Morton, 1987), 134–42.

Peppercorn

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Piper nigrum
Region of origin: Tropical Asia

Piper trioicum R., watercolour on paper, commissioned by William Roxburgh. http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:682369-1.

Quotations:

"Nearby, the girls are skipping rope, screaming, as they turn the rope faster and faster: ‘Salt ... Vinegar ... Mustard ... Pepper ... Pepper, pepper!’" (36)




Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 707, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Pigeon pea

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Cajanus cajan
Region of origin: India


Forest and Kim Starr, Cajanus cajan, n.d., photograph, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:1152177-2. 

Quotations:

"She saw clumps of it in Deep Ravine, overpowering a field of grapefruit trees, covering an old wooden house in Hibiscus and weighing down a field of dried corn and pigeon peas, and she kept looking to see when it would reach the streets of Cunaripo, giving up with a smile the idea of Bango ever plastering the walls of the kitchen." (71)

"They had their basket with pigeon peas and rice and chicken and they had an icebox with cool drinks and a bottle of rum and they spread a towel underneath one of the trees in the Memorial Park next to the Savannah [...]." (78)






Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 404, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Sugarcane

Number of times mentioned: 10
Latin name: Saccharum officinarum
Region of origin: Malaysia, New Guinea, Polynesia


Hermann Adolph Köhler, Saccharum officinarum, 1887, Coloured plate, 1887, Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 2, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:419977-1.


Quotations:

"‘How you know to come to me now?’ asked Mother Ethel, pushing herself up from the bench facing the shrine in the yard, with the calabash tree and the pomegranate tree with the iron for Ogun and the conch shell for Yemanja and the sugarcane plant, for Damballah, the snake." (14)

"[...] Cunaripo, the town: with the police station and the Catholic church and the Warden's office its major buildings, with a Scale House for weighing canes and an Ice Box for selling ice and a Buying House where farmers from surrounding estates brought bags of polished cocoa beans and dried coffee to be weighed and exchanged for money and then to be shipped by rail to Port-of-Spain, the port where they all led, the train lines and the ribbons of road, streaming through forest, along sea coasts, joining plantation to plantation, coconuts and cocoa and cane, until they reached the port from which ships sailed out to England, out into the world, the world, already to him more than a place, a mission, a Sacred Order that brought him into meaning, into Life." (16)

"And he waited, preparing for his departure into that other world, the world, watching the seasons change and the deluge of rain turn the cracked savannah into pools of mud; and he continued to call out spelling and work sums with the children; and sometimes, feeling himself a stranger far from home, feeling surrounded by the cocoa and the canes [...]" (19)

"He went into Woodford Square, walking through the grandest guard of honour ever assembled for anybody in this country, the line stretching from the Singer entrance on Frederick Street right up to the podium, the whole country gathered there, the place looking and smelling like Trinidad and Tobago, market women in Shouters' headdress, smelling of red lavender and rosewater, vendors of paratha roti in orhnis, about them the scent of fresh coconut oil and burnt geera, clapping hands and shaking tambourines; stevedores with flags in their huge fists and towels draped over their formidable shoulders, nurses in grey stockings and starched aproned uniforms, vagrants in their Sunday best, soapbox politicians with their fingers on their lips, choirs of schoolchildren, oyster vendors and sugarcane workers, and a contingent of supporters from the opposition parties." (57)

"Blood is oozing from the bleeding sugar." (62)

"The plantation run down now the cocoa gone, the sugar ain't have no price." (69)

"They show The West Indies, Barbados and Jamaica where they land the cargo of these captive people and collect the cargo of sugar and cotton and spices to take back to Europe for sale." (75)

"Rum, glorious rum, / When I call you, you bound to come, / You was made from Caroni cane, extracted in Port-of-Spain" (98)

"The cocoa and the sugar prices went tumbling down, labour disappeared." (100)




Botanical reference: N. Parthasarathy, “Origin of Noble Sugar-Canes (Saccharum Officinarum.),” Nature 161, no. 4094 (April 1, 1948): 608–608, https://doi.org/10.1038/161608a0.

Sweet lime

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Triphasia trifolia
Region of origin: India

Quotations:

"And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he found himself in those timeless afternoons pushing his bicycle alongside her as she walked from school to the taxi stand along the quiet street past the little jalousied wooden houses in their gardens fenced with hibiscus or sweet lime." (35)
"Everything was as it was: the slow dogs stretched out in the lazy street, the wooden houses surrounded by their flower gardens hedged from the road by hibiscus and sweetlime fences." (37)











Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 857, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Tea

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Camellia sinensis
Region of origin: China, India

Quotations:

"Ladies in lace petticoats and bonnets of silk are having tea on the cool veranda while Black maids with abundant bosoms and willing hands hold the trays." (62)
"She would feel tears just watching him on a Saturday afternoon lead the Cascadu team on to the field, all of them in baptismal white, leisurely like princes dismounted from horses, throwing the ball and catching it and flinging it backwards and flinging it high into the air, time belonging to them, time to check the direction of the wind, the hardness of the pitch to be concerned whether it suited pace or spin, time for tea -- really a drink of water or a cup of juice or an ice cream from one of the ladies selling around the ground [...]." (71)











Botanical reference: Muditha K Meegahakumbura et al., “Domestication Origin and Breeding History of the Tea Plant (Camellia Sinensis) in China and India Based on Nuclear Microsatellites and CpDNA Sequence Data,” Frontiers in Plant Science 8 (January 25, 2018): 2270–2270, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2017.02270.

Teak

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Tectona grandis
Region of origin: India, Laos

Quotations:

"Onwards, downhill, under the piercing morning sun in this stretch of unshaded road, past the stand of young teak with their broad stiff leaves and, in the wind, scraping sounds, into the valley with its guard of mahogany trees, dark and cool, and up this last hill past the cemetery, for it to burst upon him, Cunaripo, the town [...]." (15)












Botanical reference: Daniel Verhaegen et al., “What Is the Genetic Origin of Teak (Tectona Grandis L.) Introduced in Africa and in Indonesia?,” Tree Genetics & Genomes 6, no. 5 (2010): 717, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-010-0286-x.

Watermelon

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Cucumis citrullus
Region of origin: Northeastern Africa

Quotations:

"Another brother, Mano, who used to play music in the parang band, put down his cuatro and take up a dougla girl from in the back of Princes Town and gone in the forest to build a house and squat a piece of land and plant watermelon and make children." (73)












Botanical reference: Harry S. Paris, “Origin and Emergence of the Sweet Dessert Watermelon, Citrullus Lanatus,” Annals of Botany 116, no. 2 (August 1, 2015): 133–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcv077.

White yam

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Dioscorea alata
Region of origin: Tropical and subtropical Asia

Quotations:

"Next day, after drinking the mountain dew and eating the meal of wild hog and white yam they offered, JoJo left, following as they led him through the maze of tracts that eventually put him on the main trace that would take him to the high road." (88)












Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 301-302, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.