Five months after Hurricane Patricia plowed directly over the Moringa collection, the plants are looking good. We lost about 30% of the plants that were planted out in the botanical garden, mostly the smaller ones. Some of the larger plants went dormant and are still leafless. Though they have never done this before, and have kept their leaves through the dry season sans hurricane, in general leaflessness is normal for this time of year, which is the height of the dry season. And like many plants of tropical drylands, Moringa species flower at the height of the dry season and shed their seeds just before the rains come. Despite the battering they took back in October, some plants are flowering for the first time here. Moringa oleifera, M. drouhardii, M. concanensis, M. stenopetala, M. rivae, and M. longituba have flowered before, but it’s the first time that we’ll have more than one M. longituba and more than one M. rivae in flower at the same time. I will be in the field when they open, but I am trusting humminbirds and bees to do the right thing. It would be the first time we get seed from these species from our own plants. Just as exciting, it’s the first time that M. borziana flowers in the collection (they nearly did in October/November, but Patricia blew all the buds off). Not only that, but it looks like three plants will bloom at the same time, so again fingers are crossed for seeds. Also, here are what as far as I know are the first photographs ever of Moringa hildebrandtii flowers, which I had never seen before. They are described in the literature as being slightly bilaterally symmetrical, but this is not really evident in these flowers. What is interesting and unique in the family is the long “claw” (the petal “stalk”), and the very short “limb” (the “petal” part of the petal). Not only is the limb short, but it withers and turns brown almost immediately after opening. The result is a vivid combination of yellows and browns in the floral display of Moringa hildebrandtii. Alberto’s Moringa oleifera experiment on the relationship between plant size, leaf area, and stem length got flattened in October and has come back nicely. He and Diana have started harvesting plants and have made excellent progress. Hopefully we’ll have a manuscript by the end of the year. Finally, a few photos of the plants in the collection plus some local animals, in this case an anole lizard Anolis nebulosus I think, which is common in the collection, plus some ibises, which I had seen in the area but never in the collection itself.
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"SuperMoringa" ??? Do tell more! :D
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AuthorDr. Mark E. Olson is a researcher at Mexico's national university and an expert on the biology of the genus Moringa Archives
November 2018
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