Sunday, August 20, 2006

Searching for jobo

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, then it must be a bloody duck.

That's the same for a Jobo. The leaves look like a Jobo and the fruit looks and tastes like a Jobo. My tropical dendrology friends look at the fruit and say: That's a Jobo!
But the bark on the trunk is not fissured like a Jobo ought to be. Then a visiting dendrologist told me it wasn't a Jobo at all! That the tree was in fact, a Tapirira brenesii or Cirri Amarillo, as they call it in Costa Rica.

Well Tapirira didn't correspond to what I could find in the literature and the Cirri Amarillo refers to a Mauria heterophylla in my dendrology bible "Arboles de Costa Rica". And that didn't describe my Jobo looking tree at Finca El Tigre, located near Rodeo, near Univ. for Peace, in Costa Rica.

So you know what? I'm going to call this Jobo looking tree a Jobo! Even if the bark isn't fissured.

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