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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When not being used for food, oil, forage, medicine, water purification, fiber, or biofuels, moringas are often used as ornamentals. I will look at outdoor uses in another post. This post will look at small moringas as ornamentals in pots grown by people who like to look at tubers, roots, and other sculptural dryland plants. Dryland plants that grow with exposed tubers, or that can be grown with exposed tubers, are often known as caudiciforms or caudex plants, and fat, water-storing trees are known as pachycaul trees. They are both esteemed ornamentals. The most recent shipment of my moringa collections from Africa, Asia, and Madagascar just arrived from Missouri, where they have been under expert care for more than ten years. They will soon be planted out here at the collection and grow into trees or shrubs, and lose some of the charm that they now have. So it's a good time to take a snapshot of what they look like now to show what moringas look like when grown very "hard," that is, with very little water. You will never kill a moringa for lack of water. Keep them dry, only let them grow a few weeks a year, and you will be rewarded with a very fat-based, compact caudiciform. Most of the plants shown below are 10 years old from seed. By far one of the best caudiciform species is our old friend Moringa oleifera. Remember that this species is famous for growing into a 6-8 meter tall tree in a year. If you give it just a little too much water, it will shoot for the sky and you will lose the charming caudiciform shape. Keep them dry, though, and you will be rewarded with almost comical, often almost perfectly shperical fat tubers. Most oleiferas will do this-- the photo below includes street tree M. oleifera from India, from Madagascar, and the cultivar PKM. That M. oleifera is so easy to come by inexpensively, along with its tendency to form wonderful caudiciforms, leads several unscrupulous nurserymen to sell hard-grown oleifera seedlings posing as the rare northeast Africa dwarf species such as M. borziana or M. rivae. These are to my knowledge not in the nursery trade and probably represent M. oleifera. If you have doubts, send me photos and I can try to ID your plants. The pachycaul species Moringa ovalifolia also does well in a pot. It grows as a tuberous herb for many years before forming a permanent stem. This is a good pachycaul tree for a pot because unlike many pachycauls it gets a very fat base in a pot, looking like a miniature version of its wild self. Moringa peregrina, one of the slender trees, is one of the most exotic moringas when grown in a pot. A tree in the wild, it hangs on for years as a caudiciform when grown in a pot, dying back to perfect globby tubers when it gets dry. When watered, it produces blue foliage, unique in the family. Moringa longituba is a coveted species, with its fat tubers and red flowers. The tuber in the wild grows way below ground level and moringas don't like their roots kept warm, so they are not 100% happy with growing with the tuber exposed. They grow quickly enough from seed but as adults get long and rangy if given too much water. So, Moringa offers great material for growing as ornamental caudiciforms in pots. Just be sparing with the water and watch out for M. oleifera masquerading as other species. Happily, M. oleifera, the easiest species to get ahold of, is also one of the best species for culivation as a caudiciform.
A lot of people write to ask which species is the best one for their purposes, so I thought a post on the subject might be of interest to many moringaphiles.
On the site here, and at The Moringa Home Page, I talk a lot not only about “moringa” Moringa oleifera, but also about the other 12 species of the genus. This is bewildering—which one should you grow and use for your intended application? The short answer is Moringa oleifera, no contest. Though we are still studying the other species, all research shows that M. oleifera hands down wins out over the other species in terms of leaf nutritional yield and quality, antioxidant activity, potential glucose regulatory activity, antibacterial qualities, growth rate, leaf and fruit yield, oil edibility and quality, and a host of other aspects of interest. So that’s the short answer: all evidence points to using M. oleifera for any given application. If you want more detail, keep reading! You sometimes see references to there being 14 species of moringa. On my web page and publications, I say there are 13. What gives? The idea that there are 14 species comes from Bernard Verdcourt's fine 1985 synopsis of the family. On pp. 22-23, he notes that
"A sterile specimen collected in northern Kenya shows resemblances both to M. ruspoliana but has bipinnate not simply pinnate leaves and to M. longituba but with different venation. The exact locality is known so that more material should be obtainable. A brief description is given. Plant reported to have a massive underground rootstock which develops a slender vertical stem. Leaves in a rosette at ground level, bipinnate, about 30 cm long; pinnae in 3 pairs; axes pubescent; petiole over 7 cm long; leaflets 5-7, + oblong, 5-7-5 x 2-8-45 cm, truncate to slightly emarginate at the apex and with a minute recurved thickened apiculus, rounded to subcordate at the base, drying pale grey-green, not very thin, minutely scabrid-pubescent above, shortly pubescent beneath on the characteristically raised whitish reticulate venation; petiolules 1-5 mm long. Flowers said to be yellow. KENYA. Northern Frontier Province: 32 km E of Wajir on road to Wajir Bor, open Acacia-Commiphora bushland on reddish sand, 185 m, 1 June 1977, Gillett 21313 (EA, K):- vernac. name 'wamo' (Som.)." Intriguing! Leaves in a rosette at ground level? Big fuzzy leaflets and raised venation? Yellow flowers? Nothing else like that was known in the family. I pictured something like this: ![]() The Moringa longituba seeds planted on 12 September 2013 have all sprouted! Germination in all but M. drouhardii, M. hildebrandtii, and M. ovalifolia is cryptocotylar, that is, the cotyledons typically remain in the seed coat. As is usual in moringa germination, with plenty of bottom heat, a nice open potting mix, and pleny of water, these seeds all sprouted within a week. Below you can see that the first pair of leaves in Moringa longituba have three leaflets. Most tree moringas grow like crazy in height after germination. Not M. longituba. This species lives in an area with very little rain, which falls in two very short seasons. So when water is present, the plants sprout quickly, grow two or three leaves, and invest all the rest of their energies into growing a tuber. The leaves are short lived, and the plants die back to the tuber, riding out the dry season until the next rains fall. Let's wish these little guys well. |
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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