By Alfredo and Deivid | Forestry Coordinators
Olá, dear donors!
We do hope you are all doing well in these times of change, and holding steady and safe?
Before we go any further we have an important announcement. Giving Tuesday December 1st is coming soon and we’d love to invite you to join us. This year GlobalGiving has a million dollars in matching funds, so just think how far that will stretch your donation, and how many trees that will help us to plant! Please alert all colleagues, family and friends and let’s make this the best Giving Tuesday ever!
So now for the reforestry news from Iracambi. First, and most importantly, it’s raining really hard, and that’s exactly perfect for planting. Sometimes it interferes with the logistics and makes it hard to get around, but as we told you in one of our recent letters, we’re still singing in the rain, and not grumbling too much!
We’ve now marked out the area for the new Hummingbird Forest. It’s along a river bank and, since the river sometimes floods, we need to select exactly the right species of trees that don’t mind having wet feet, as it were. One of the most important species will be Croton urucurana, commonly known as Dragon’s Blood. This is an amazing tree, whose red sap has highly curative properties for any type of wound, acting as a sort of second skin, a powerful anti-bacterial, and a rapid promoter of healing. We’ve been conducting a longitudinal study with the Federal University in Vicosa on the medicinal properties of this plant, and they’ve been able to prove what every local person round here already knows, it’s the first go-to plant when you have an open wound.
Another couple of species that we’ll plant in the areas that occasionally flood are emba-uba (Cecropia) - a fast growing pioneer species that is traditionally associated with sloths - and Ingá uruguensis which is a nitrogen-fixing tree. And on the higher drier ground, ipê roxo (Tabebuia avellanedai) and pata da vaca, (Bauhinia forficata) both of which have medicinal properties. So Carla, our Living Pharmacy coordinator who runs plant workshops with community members, will be super happy too!
We’ve also been germinating seeds to plant during the next rainy season – we did tell you that reforestry is a year-round job, didn’t we?!
And we couldn’t do any of it without your support, dear donors, so here’s a big rainforest thank you from all of us, especially
Alfredo and Deivid
PS Don’t forget to contact us if you’d like to plant a tree in honor of someone special!
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