Trees of Mexico City, or ,:Exploring my own roots

Apologies in advance for any typos.

Your fearless correspondent is sitting in an internet ¨cafe¨ (no food here) in the heart of Mexico City, or DF, as it is called here. He is using an unfamiliar keyboard, cannot download from his camera until next week, and is gaining weight on the fabulous food despite walking more than he has in years.

The trees here are of incredible variety and health, despite cruel growing conditions. I see one I just cannot identify, looks like a native fraxinus, everywhere. And ficus, ulmus, erythrina, delonix, eucalyptus, cypress. It has always been a big city. I mean, there was a botanical garden here around the timne of christ, for instance, watered by human sacrifice, probably.

But my roots are partially from here. Great grandpa´s family on both sides of my grandmother
(Nena, is what we always called her) were from here. Maybe, like most immigrant american families, we remembered only what we chose to. Nena would say, if I cut my finger; you´ll heal quick, its that good Indio blood. and practically in the same breath: Use your knife to cut, not your fork. Never forget you are descended form aristocratic spanish stock.

Trees here are probably told the same things when they are young. Don´t worry, there is water below the ground; any Banyan can find it. And in the same breath, Don´t worry about bad pruning; even the Toltec pruned us badly.

I have seen trees growing in soapy pools of water. Trees in manicured parks. Mal-pruned trees, dead trees left standing long past when anyone would be able to climb them, and  on top of this practically no tree awareness. The botanical garden at UNAM (the biggest college.... a quarter of a million enrolled at any given time) is a joke. Tiny collection;bad signage; even in Latin. Some have a sign, some do not. I have seen private yards with better accessioned tree collections, and more quantity. But a great cactus and succulent collection. I mean, not to be missed. An old oak in the succulent garden better than any tree in the botanical part. There were nice interpretive signs for butterfly identification. Go figure.  

Later I will put up the photos. Frogs on tiny millions of lilly pads, jumping sometimes through, sometimes onto them.... A waterfall and two super grottos of beautiful lava, with stairs worked in artfully. Part of that succulent collections so well tended, and the other, larger part, perhaps four acres, overrun with weeds and non-pruned agave so you had to squeeze through the poinky parts. Am I being too technical here? Poinky. Ow!

This morning I wrote in a park (-with this quaint old habit of using pen and paper I still have) filled with trees, fountains lining the walks, and benches where the folks sacked out or sat as they must have for hundreds of years.

What happened in this city, when Cortez came into power, was a levelling of the old buildings for the new. So you literally stand on history. The market was always the market, since pre-Aztec times, and it was always oriented thus, but the Metro line is new. Names change here, too.It is amazing to think, at Zocalo, that you are at the level of the old market as you descend the steps to the new subway.

Its very like Europe, in so many ways, but of course, was civilized a bit sooner. Built on a lake in the mountains, a sort of Shangri-La if you will, where the weather is mild, many things grow well, and 22 million people live in relative harmony. Mild weather. Real easy going folks. I guess you'd have to be.

Shangri-La is even real. My friend Doug once told me of finding mango trees grown for fruit production at 5,000 feet in the Himalayas. Thats a sub-tropical plant, folks, not normally found much in the mountains. Hortus Third says..."'Mangos do best on rich, well-drained soils in hot rather dry lowland climates." I thought I saw a mango here, form a taxi, but the driver said I was off my rocker. I think it may have been an avocado, something I also have seen here, from fast taxis.

One would think that there was a rule.... Hotter weather, plus water, makes everything grow better. I worked in a botanical garden in Hawaii, and I learned that this is not so. Leaving out invasive exotic species of insects, birds, plants and reptiles, not to mention humans and their mammals, certain species do better in their area of origin than they do anywhere else on earth. Others do better in a place where they are introduced. This is attributable to many things. In Hawaii, in the highlands, apples grow. They are not very tasty, at least the ones I had. (always researching... with every bite). 

I think I heard someone say it was because they did not get the cold 'hardening' they would get in a cooler clime, but really, that is not very scientific. Take the Tea tree. Melaleauca... I think it is leucadendron.

It was introduced in Florida early in the nineteenth cenury. It quickly became invasive, a weed, a nuisance, etc.  Tales are told of deer skeletons found in the everglades in copses of Leucadendron where the deer jump in, but can never find a way out of the thicket, and so starve to death. It is illegal to have or transport into Florida. Introduced at the same time in San Diego, it is a desirable, tough-to grow landscape amenity.  I have climbed them in Hawaii that were two feet in diameter, over forty feet high. Never saw one that big in San Diego.

We know, for instance, that in Hawaii, the Polynesians were responsible for introducing the coconut, the pig, and other living things. Some of these naturalized to such an extent that they became invasive. Many species formerly thriving became extinct. I think this number is 2000 species. The white man got there a few hundred years later, and is credited with extinguishing about a third of the species the polynesians did. Heavy, isn't it? Man's inhumanity to his environment, and all in the best of intentions. It makes me wonder what this area was like before the pyramids. Before the people, even.

One more thing. On top of the largest Pyramid of the sun, at Teotihuacan, I saw butterflies dancing together, maybe twelve altogether. Monarch, indeed. But I would have liked an interpretive sign!  Spirits of the pyramid builders, surely.