Story time! If trees could talk, each of the 285 trees planted in the Breadfruit Collection at the Kahanu Garden would have its own unique story to tell. Atu is one of the most rare of the more than 120 varieties conserved in the collection. Before she was BFI Director Diane Ragone PhD, graduate student Diane Ragone was living in Samoa in 1985. She traveled to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and worked with two Agricultural Extension agents who helped her as she collected breadfruit tree root cuttings around the island. When they hiked to the back of the Matavela Valley, the agents pointed out a single Atu tree in an abandoned agricultural area that they believed to be the last of its kind on Rarotonga. The tree was so covered in choking vines that it was barely recognizable, and most likely would not survive much longer. One of the root cuttings that Diane collected that day is now a beautiful tree, part of the world’s largest living breadfruit repository in the collection at Kahanu Garden, and may be one of the last trees of this variety . ntbg.org/breadfruit/database/search/plant/50
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 01:00:01 +0000
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