Toromiro
| Toromiro | ||||||||||||
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Toromiro on Rapa Nui |
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| Sophora toromiro | ||||||||||||
| Skottsb. |
The Toromiro ( Sophora toromiro ) is a species of the pagoda trees ( Sophora ) in the subfamily of the butterflies (Faboideae). This rare species, thought to be extinct at times, is endemic to Easter Island .
description
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The Toromiro is a slow-growing, small tree or shrub with a stature height of probably up to 3 meters. "It is unclear whether the toromiro is a shrub or whether it grows into a tree after a while (such as the closely related species Sophora microphylla and Sophora tetraptera, which can grow up to 10 meters high )." it can be concluded that the main stem can reach a diameter of up to 30 centimeters, possibly more. The gray-brown bark is smooth, but densely covered with small, light gray-appearing cracks. The unpinnate, pinnate leaves have fine, silver-gray hairs on the underside and the petioles, which can only be seen when enlarged; it makes the underside of the leaf appear lighter. The light green individual leaves are about 5 millimeters long and oval.
The solitary, yellow flowers are about 2 centimeters long and have ten stamens . The legumes , up to 10 centimeters long, contain four to five seeds each .
history
Archaeobotanical research by the University of Reading , Great Britain , suggests that Sophora toromiro originally grew in the undergrowth on the fringes of the once extensive palm forests on Easter Island.
We owe the first written mention of Toromiro to Georg Forster , who discovered this plant species as a participant in James Cook's second South Sea voyage (1772 to 1775) on Easter Island:
“Although we had stopped a few times, we were finally able to reach the top of the hill from which we could see the western sea and the anchored ship. The hill was covered with bushy mimosa [Forster thought the toromiro was a mimosa], which grew here to a height of eight or nine feet, and some of the trunks were about the thickness of a man's upper arm. "
Forster collected plant parts for the herbarium of the British Museum of Natural History , which are still in this collection today.
The French explorer Jean-François de La Pérouse , who visited Easter Island in 1786, writes:
"Here and there the mimosa grows, but only in individual thin shrubs, the strongest branches of which are never more than three inches in diameter."
The paymaster William Thomson, who visited Easter Island in 1886 on board the American ship Mohican , reported that flora had already been largely destroyed as a result of the browsing of domestic animals:
“In different places. . . we found small clusters of Edwardsia [Thompson uses the obsolete generic name "Edwardsia" for the toromiro], Broussonetia, and Hibiscus, but all of them were dead, all of their bark bitten off by the flocks of sheep that roamed the island. None of these trees were taller than 10 feet, and the thickest trunk we found was just 5 inches in diameter. "
In 1935, the archaeologist Alfred Métraux photographed one of the last Toromiro, which was almost extinct at the time, in the lower slope of the Rano Kao crater . The black and white photo is today in the archives of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris . It shows (with a crouching woman as a benchmark) a bushy growing, still densely leafy plant about two meters high with several small stems that have a maximum thickness of approximately 20 cm.
The botanist Efrain Volovsky collected herbarium specimens for the Botanical Garden of the University of Viña del Mar in 1953 and describes the plant species in the Rano Kao - probably the same that Métraux had seen - as a tree 3 m high and 25 cm trunk diameter.
The Legend of the Toromiro-tree was Hotu Matua brought to Easter Island. However, Sophora toromiro was detected in archaeobotanical pollen analyzes of Easter Island 35,000 years ago, so that it can be considered certain that the plant has settled on Easter Island without human influence. A close relative of the Toromiro, Sophora cassioides ( synonyms : Edwardsia cassioides Phil., Sophora microphylla Ait.), Is still widespread in Chile today. The seeds of many Sophora species survive a longer stay in salt water, so that the natural distribution by ocean currents, starting from the Chilean mainland, can be assumed.
The hard and fine-pored wood , which darkens deep red with increasing age , was used in many ways in Easter Island culture, as building material, for the manufacture of household items and weapons, but mainly as the basic material for ritual carvings ( Moai wooden figures , Rei-Miro , Ao and Rapa as well as ceremonial sticks and clubs). Intensive human use probably contributed to the species' decline even before the arrival of the Europeans. When Easter Island was used extensively as a pasture for a British-Chilean consortium of companies in the 19th and 20th centuries, the population was completely extinct, as the domestic animals brought in by the Europeans grazed the bark of the trees and bushes. During his Easter Island expedition (1955/56), Thor Heyerdahl brought seeds from what is presumably the last surviving Toromiro tree from the Rano Kau crater to Europe (possibly the same specimen that Métraux had photographed twenty years earlier). According to Heyerdahl's description, the plant was badly damaged and almost all branches were robbed.
Preservation and reproduction
Thor Heyerdahl sent the six or seven seeds collected in the Rano Kao to Sweden , where, after a few detours, they were handed over to the Botanical Garden in Gothenburg . It was not until three years after the arrival that attempts were made to grow plants from it. Five seeds were germinated the following year. Further plant specimens were obtained from cuttings, which were passed on to other botanical gardens, where they were raised and propagated. For a long time the only toromiro growing on Easter Island was in the governor's garden , which was a small specimen imported from the Botanical Garden in Viña del Mar.
In 1988 a specimen was rediscovered in the Bonn Botanical Garden , which probably came from the Göteborg collection from 1972–1975. The plant is now about 1.5 m high and has already been propagated many times. In winter, the trees are kept in a cool greenhouse at 10 to 15 ° C, in the frost-free time outdoors. The Toromiro thrives best in a lime-poor, slightly acidic soil.
In 1993 the Toromiro Management Group was founded with the aim of relocating Toromiros to Easter Island. It included the Botanical Gardens in Bonn, Gothenburg and the Kew Garden near London as well as the Chilean Forest Authority (CONAF) and other experts. In 1995, 180 young plants were brought back from the botanical gardens in Bonn and Gothenburg and handed over to the Chilean forest authorities. Apparently, many of the plants in quarantine died of a fungal infection, but several specimens that have so far thrived well survived. Whether the complete reintroduction would ever succeed was considered uncertain because of the narrow genetic base. However, due to the ongoing reintroduction program, there are now more than 1,000 specimens of the Toromiro on Easter Island, making it very likely to survive.
In 1990 the French botanist Catherine Orliac succeeded in microscopically identifying the cell structure of the Toromiro using wood samples from Gothenburg, so that the authenticity of art objects from Easter Island can now be proven beyond doubt.
Individual evidence
- ^ B. Mackinder, M. Staniforth: Sophora - The History and Taxonomy In: Curtis's Botanical Magazine , Volume 14, pp. 221-226.
- ↑ Quotation from: Björn Alden and Georg Ziska: The Toromiro - an extinct plant is rediscovered In: Natur und Museum, 119 (5), Frankfurt a. M. 1989, p. 147
- ^ Carl Skottsberg: Natural History of Juan Fernandez and Easter Island , Uppsala 1922, Volume 2, p. 73
- ↑ Mike Maunder: Sophora Toromiro - Current Conservation Status in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Volume 14, pp. 226-231
- ^ Georg Forster: A voyage round the world in His Britannic Majesty's sloop Resolution commanded by Capt. James Cook during the years 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775, London 1777, Volume 1, p. 592
- ↑ La Perouse'n's voyage of discovery in the years 1785, 1786, 1787 and 1788, edited by MCA Milet Mureau, translated from the French by JR Forster and EL Sprengel, Berlin, 1799
- ^ William J. Thomson: Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island, by Paymaster William J. Thomson, US Navy, Washington 1891, p. 451
- ↑ JR Flenley and Sarah King: Late Quarternary pollen records from Easter Island, in Nature, Vol. 307, 1984, pp. 47-50
- ↑ History of Toromiro until 1995 (en) W. Liller, The Oldest Toromiro in the World (1995) in Rapa Nui Journal, Vol. 9 (3), pp. 65-68
- ↑ B. Aldén: Le Toromiro, l'arbre des Pascuans fleurit toujours en Suéde, in Nouveau regard sur l'Île de Pâques, Chapitre IX: Histoire de la végétation de l'Île de Pâques, Rapa Nui , 1982, p. 119 -120.
- ^ Wolfram Lobin: Sophora Toromiro in the Botanical Garden University Bonn, in Courier Research Institute Senckenberg, Volume 125, pp. 229-231, 1990
- ^ Wolfram Lobin & Wilhelm Barthlott: Sophora toromiro (Leguminosae); the lost tree of Easter Islands in Botanic Gardens Conservation News, Volume 1 No.3, pages 32-34; 1988
- ↑ reintroduction of Tomhohiro according Botanical Garden Bonn , accessed on 26 March 2017
- ↑ M. Maunder, A. Cullen, B. Alden, G. Zizka, C. Orliac, W. Lobin, A. Bordeu, J. Ramirez & S. Glissmann-Gough: Conservation of the Toromiro Tree: Case Study in the Management of a Plant Extinct in the Wild in Conservation Biology , Volume 14, No. 5, 2000, pp. 1341-1350.
- ↑ Status of the rearing program (de) according to latina-press.com from February 5, 2016, accessed on March 26, 2017
- ^ Catherine Orliac: Sophora Toromiro, One of the Raw Materials Used by Pascuan Carvers in Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Volume 125, pp. 221-227
Web links
- Photos of the Toromiro
- Homepage of the Toromiro Management Group : Sophora toromir ( Memento from May 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Sophora toromiro in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: World Conservation Monitoring Center, 1998. Retrieved on 11 May, 2006.