Salt

Angelin

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Andira inermis
Region of origin: West Indies

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 398, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Avocado

Number of times mentioned: 3
Latin name: Persea americana
Region of origin: Southern Mexico, Mexico, Central America, South America

Quotations:

"Look, carry for him these two avocados and this half a dozen eggs to build up his strength." (25)

"LUNCH: / Fish or Meat 4 ounces / Rice / Provisions / Salad / Avocado / Fruit" (32)

"The night she thought would be her last in Alford George's bed, Florence poured avocado oil in the palms of her hands and massaged his naked body [...]." (120


Botanical reference: Julia Morton, “Avocado,” accessed June 26, 2021, https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/avocado_ars.html.

Balata

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Manilkara bidentata
Region of origin: Lesser Antilles, Trinidad, South America

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)



Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 885, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Bodi

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Vigna unguiculata
Region of origin: West Indies

Quotations:

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


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 468, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Bois canot

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Schefflera morototoni
Region of origin: Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands (St. John, St. Thomas, Tortola), Lesser Antilles (Guadeloupe), Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Central America, and South America

Quotations:

"One day he arrived on the ground with his own wickets, a bat he had himself fashioned out of the root of a bois canot tree, one of his taped and polished tennis balls." (18)




Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 68–69, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Bougainvillea

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Bougainvillea spp.
Region of origin: Brazil

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: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 609, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Calabash tree

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Crescentia cujete
Region of origin: Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America

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)

"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: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 148, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Cedar

Number of times mentioned: 3
Latin name: Tabebuia heterophylla
Region of origin: West Indies

Quotations:

"She didn't feel rushed; and it was with this quality of self-confidence that in the beginning she stretched out, relaxed on our veranda, under the shade of the cedar tree, watching the iguanas change their skin, the cedar seeds burst open, spread out their wings and set sail on the wind [...]." (49)

"He tried to look interested and to send little signals, little eye-flutterings or other gestures of interest to those to whom she was most attracted and when they didn't respond in the way she wanted, she sat on the veranda under the mottled sunlight and the leaves falling from our cedar tree [...]." (50)



Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 153, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Chaconia

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Warszewiczia coccinea
Region of origin: West Indies

Quotations:

"He got the newspapers to come and there was a picture of him in the newspapers kneeling with the mothers of the Church, surrounded by lighted candles and flowers without thorns, marigold and croton and ginger lilies and chaconia and fern." (65)





Botanical reference: “National Flower,” Ministry of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, accessed June 27, 2021, https://foreign.gov.tt/about/Trinidad and Tobago-tobago/national-symbols/national-flower/.

Cacao (also known as cocoa)

Number of times mentioned: 14
Latin name: Theobroma cacao
Region of origin: South America

Quotations:

"It had times they just wanted to jump into the sea and take a sea bath, to romp with a girl on a bed of dead leaves underneath the umbrella of cocoa trees." (6)

"He knew he had to get a job right away; and that was how he came the following morning to be standing in the yard of Carabon's estate, asking for work, until at last they handed him a spade and sent him down to the cocoa field where the men were digging trenches to drain the beds of cocoa, wearing the same clothes he had on in the dance since they were the only clothes in his possession." (11)

"[...] 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)

"When he returned from Training College she was a woman, attending Cosmos Business Academy, in her uniform of blue and blue, her books cradled in the crook of her arms, carrying the scent of green wood-fire smoke and forest moss under her armpits and on her skin, no longer surging forth with the careless, leaping exuberant rhythm of the bush and the cocoa fields of The Settlement, that rhythm abandoned [...]." (21)

"DINNER: / Steak / Chocolate (hot) / Rice or potatoes" (32)

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

"And they went down that afternoon to the river under the cocoa trees, the two of them alone and went naked in the water and that night she felt a chill, a fear when they loved each other, and she didn't know what to tell him." (73)

"And what would rescue her, she thought as she looked out the window of Tall Boy taxi at the breezy green settlement around her, the wisps of hibiscus squeezing through the mat of roadside Ti-Marie, their sparse stunted flowers splashes of red on the wreath of the Carabon plantation, at the boy, in the brilliance of this peace, barebacked, his solemn muscles polished by sweat, with the calm demeanour of a saint emerging from a thicket of cocoa with a slingshot and birdcage and bunch of bird-pecked bananas to pause shipwrecked before the ocean of road sailing away for miles under shimmering waves of heat [...]." (77)

"[...] from the stillness of the whitewashed wooden barrack houses overhung by the outflung branches of the giant immortelle shading the blighted cocoa [...]." (77)

"‘And what will rescue her?’ I ask myself as I pay Tall Boy his money and wave a hand at the shyly smiling figure who had come to the doorway of her prison. ‘The muscular boy panting to lead her under the shade of the cocoa trees unto a bed of dead leaves?" (78)

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


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 524, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Cork

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Ochroma pyramidale
Region of origin: West Indies, Mexico, Central America, South America

Quotations:

"They showed us the ships that come back with another load of saltfish and salt pork and smoke herring and tasso and salt: with khaki and cotton cloth and cork hats and hoes and cutlass and soft candle and rope." (75)




Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 515, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Maize (also known as corn)

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Zea mays
Region of origin: Mexico and Guatemala

Quotations:

"[...] Jo-Jo's great- grandfather, Guinea John, with his black jacket on and a price of two hundred pounds sterling on his head, made his way to the East Coast, mounted the cliff at Manzanilla, put two corn cobs under his armpits and flew away to Africa" (4)

"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)



Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 765, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Cotton

Number of times mentioned: 4
Latin name: Gossypium barbadense
Region of origin: South America

Quotations:

"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)

"They showed us the ships that come back with another load of saltfish and salt pork and smoke herring and tasso and salt: with khaki and cotton cloth and cork hats and hoes and cutlass and soft candle and rope." (75)

"He was back to being a child of seven when he was part of the ceremony to get him to talk, beside him his mother, before him Mother Ethel large in her dress of many layers of cotton, her hands in his, her breathing bosom heaving out her mothersmell, the smell of scented oils under folds of cotton [...]." (126)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 504, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Croton

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Croton trinitatis
Region of origin: Trinidad, Mexico, Central America, South America

Quotations:

"He got the newspapers to come and there was a picture of him in the newspapers kneeling with the mothers of the Church, surrounded by lighted candles and flowers without thorns, marigold and croton and ginger lilies and chaconia and fern." (65)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 329, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Ginger lily

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Hedychium Coccineum
Region of origin: Bhutan, India, Nepal, Myanmar, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand

Quotations:

"He got the newspapers to come and there was a picture of him in the newspapers kneeling with the mothers of the Church, surrounded by lighted candles and flowers without thorns, marigold and croton and ginger lilies and chaconia and fern." (65)




Botanical reference: Djamila Djeddour, “Hedychium Coccineum (Scarlet Ginger Lily)” (CAB International, 2016), https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/114692.

Grapefruit

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Citrus x paradisi
Region of origin: Barbados

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)

"It was just the property, just his duty to be there until Daddy died; now it began to claim him, not just the bearing trees but the old grapefruit trees with branches drying and breaking off and the fruit small and their skin thick and mottled with fungus [...]." (100)


Botanical reference: Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Grapefruit." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 19, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/plant/grapefruit

Guatacare

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Eschweilera subglandulosa
Region of origin: From eastern Venezuela (including Trinidad) to Surinam near the French Guiana border and from the northern coast of South America south to the Amazon River

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)





Botanical reference: Scott A. Mori and Ghillean T. Prance Prance, “Taxon Details: Eschweilera Subglandulosa (Steud. Ex O.Berg) Miers,” The New York Botanical Garden, 2021, http://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/projects/lp/taxon-details/.

Guava

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Psidium guajava
Region of origin: West Indies, United States, Mexico, Central America, South America

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)

"And soon in front his store were people selling on payday weekends, guava jams, tamarind balls, strainers for rice, rolling-pins, mortars, coal-pots, khaki pants and khaki shirts." (109)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 605-606, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Immortelle

Number of times mentioned: 10
Latin name: Erythrina poeppigiana
Region of origin: Central and South America

Quotations:

"On the morning of the day that Alford George was to discover that he wasn't going to be leaving the island, Miss May parted the curtains at the front door of the wood house on top the hill, gathered up her strength and stepped down into the speckled sunlight filtering through the overhanging branches of the immortelle tree, her small black Bible gripped in one hand, a finger between its pages marking her place." (7)

"Sometimes she would find him sitting naked in the yard, trying with his tiny fingers to grab hold of the tail of a chicken or to scoop up the light patterning the ground under the immortelle tree, dirt on his face, dirt in his hair, dirt between his teeth, in his eyes bafflement and the surprise that these mysteries did not stand still for him." (7)

"This house here under the immortelle tree too damp for me." (8)

"'You should cut down the immortelle tree, you know, Dixon. The dampness going to kill us here.’" (8)

"I know you busy, Dixon,’ her voice theatrical, still subduing the tears she never used, ‘and the immortelle flowers pretty, but if you don't cut it down, it will kill us here.’" (9)

"Because a good six months hadn't passed, living in the house, there under the immortelle tree, when the dampness started to penetrate her bones and she began to be ill." (8)

"And although the dampness was killing her, he couldn't cut down the immortelle tree, because to face Carabon with such a request was to give to Carabon a power that he, Dixon, was unwilling to concede and expose the very shame he was seeking to disguise." (13)

"‘And don't shout at me,’ she said. ‘I tired. Look,’ she said, ‘look at the immortelle blossoms how they pretty,’ lifting her head to the sunshine and the overhanging tree. ‘The flowers will look nice on a wreath.’" (22)

"Then suddenly one day he awoke to find that time had gone; the house completed, the immortelle tree cut down, his mother dead, Ashton transferred with promotion to Cedros, Floyd married and gone, and he, Alford, thirty-three years old still in the island [...]." (33)

"[...] from the stillness of the whitewashed wooden barrack houses overhung by the outflung branches of the giant immortelle shading the blighted cocoa [...]." (78)

Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 428, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Laurier cannelle

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Aniba Citrifolia (Nees) Mez
Region of origin: Trinidad and Northern Brazil

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)

Botanical reference: “Aniba Citrifolia (Nees) Mez,” Plants of the World Online, 2017, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:13820-2.

Mora

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Mora excelsa
Region of origin: Trinidad and South America

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)


Botanical reference: “Mora Excelsa Benth.,” Plants of the World Online, 2017, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:509104-1.

Potato

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Solanum tuberosum
Region of origin: Andean highlands

Quotations:

"DINNER: / Steak / Chocolate (hot) / Rice or potatoes" (32)



Botanical reference: Canadian Food Inspection Agency Government of Canada, “The Biology of Solanum Tuberosum (L.) (Potatoes),” reference material, March 5, 2012, https://inspection.canada.ca/plant-varieties/plants-with-novel-traits/applicants/directive-94-08/biology-documents/solanum-tuberosum-l-/eng/1330982063974/1330982145930#a31.

Red anthurium lily

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Anthurium scherzerianum
Region of origin: Costa Rica

Quotations:

"She was thinking of the red anthurium lilies in the flower garden she was tending [...]." (67)

"But instead when he open his mouth, it was to praise the beauty of the anthuriums and to wonder about the care that make the flower garden so pretty, so that I, like this big fool, out of the generosity and eagerness that always get me in trouble, ask him if he want one of the flowers." (68)




Botanical reference: “Anthurium Scherzerianum Schott,” Plants of the World Online, accessed June 27, 2021, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:85334-1.

Samaan

Number of times mentioned: 2
Latin name: Samanea saman
Region of origin: Mexico, Central America, and South America

Quotations:

"Next morning Alford arrived under the samaan tree in the front of the offices of the Ministry of Education [...]." (42)

"That night he left the wake with her and they walked into Port-of-Spain to Brunswick Square, there under the samaan trees [...]." (86)


Botanical reference: Pedro Acevedo and Mark Strong, “Catalogue of Seed Plants of the West Indies,” Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98 (January 1, 2012): 457, https://doi.org/10.5479/si.0081024X.98.1.

Wild yam

Number of times mentioned: 1
Latin name: Dioscorea pilosiuscula
Region of origin: West Indies

Quotations:

"He had walked in the of the forest where the monkeys howled and the snakes waited at the end of traces near fruit trees, where cut vines sprung water, high up where parrots feasted on balata trees, into this far peace where bands of wild hogs rooted among wild yams and up to the early paths of streams, high above the waterfall up among the guatacaire and mora trees, among the angelin and the perfumed laurier into a freedom precarious like the fern rooted on stone, all about it rooted itself anywhere it could hold, all about him, everywhere, breaking forth in the songs of birds, in the brilliance of flowers, ants crawling, with helicoptering honeybees, until after three days wandering, one morning with dawn breaking he saw at the side of a mora tree the huge eyes of a half-naked boy with his brother's face looking at him." (88)


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

Basil / Albahaca

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Basil / Albahaca

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Basil / Albahaca

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Basil / Albahaca

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Basil / Albahaca

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