We are alive but battered on St. croix

[Tang Tonic]

Greetings everyone,

As you all know the Caribbean was hit hard this year.  First our sister islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and British Virgin Islands took a serious beating from Hurricane Irma.  St. Croix was the hub for relief efforts to those islands and many of us donated our hurricane supplies to them.  We had just come down from the stress of barely being missed by Irma when Maria showed up on the horizon.  Everyone hunkered down and while the entire island was spared a direct hit, the west end suffered extreme damage as the northern eyewall scraped by. 

My property is on the north side of the island and I estimate about 15 miles from the eyewall.  Needless to say, the island got severely damaged and my property was thoroughly shredded.  Luckily much of my plantings are juvenile so not a complete loss as I could stand them back up.  But my beautiful genip forest was hit hard and several large lignum vitae trees on my property were uprooted and never to be seen again.

I was in the process of building a house and all my concrete forms and rebar got blown down along with the electrical conduit I had worked hard putting in place.  It's going to be a long road to recovery.  6 months before I expect to see electricity again.  We are grateful though for health and life!  We are also better off than Puerto Rico because most houses have cisterns and generators.  I also run the reverse osmosis water plant for the public drinking water supply and we had our system back up 48 hours after the storm so both St. Thomas and St. Croix residents have access to potable water which is something PR is struggling with.

If anyone has extra seeds they would be willing to send my way I would be very very grateful.  This severe pruning event gives me an opportunity to replace some of the surrounding forest with more fruit trees.  Any seeds, scions, or small plants are very welcomed.  I would be willing to pay the shipping via paypal but can't afford a lot right now as much money is needed to redo what was lost on my construction project.

You probably don't hear much about the Virgin Islands in mainstream media but our territory was hit with two CAT 5 storms while PR was hit with one CAT 4.  So its bad here.  There are 300+ year old Mahogany trees uprooted which says a lot about the strength of the storm.  Hugo decimated the island in '89 as a CAT 4 and those trees survived that storm.  So Maria was significantly more powerful.  I could write so much more about the before during and aftermath of the storm.  It's been a whirlwind of emotions and the ups and downs fluctuate daily.  But the community is strong!  And me and my family are survivors!  We harvested fallen coconuts, I've been spearfishing which is a passion of mine so we have plenty of fresh fish, and we are good friend with some folks here that teach survival skills classes so we know what and where to forage wild greens to add into our staples for vitamins and taste.  Its like long term camping!

[achetadomestica]

Hi Matt
Glad to hear you are alive and in great spirits considering.
It sure could have been worse for us all.

I have red jabos, peanut butter fruit, Na Dai sugar apples, pitangatuba, and muntingia calabura
fruit and maybe a couple Black Suriname cherry seeds now if you are interested? No charge for postage,
If you would rather wait a month or two the offer stands, Also next spring I should have
allot more available and I would be happy to get you something out then.

I lost power for 9 days but only lost a couple trees, half of my lanai flew 150 feet from the back of
my house to the front of my house and squashed a St. Rita fig that I hated. It always dropped the fruit
premature and I couldn't wait to replace it with anything else. Three weeks later the people I hired to
replace my lanai tore down the old lanai and cleaned up the large piece in my yard. The squashed fig
that was covered for three weeks has new leaves and is going to make it. Damn I can't tear it out now!

I lost a large loquat tree that I grew from a seedling and I figure I can put 6 sugar apples in it's place.
I would have never gotten rid of the loquat even though the fruit was average at best and was wasting
too much real estate. It was one of the first trees I planted 7+ years ago. It's amazing how fast fruit
junkies can utilize new space and improve their place to be more productive. Let me know if I can
send you anything?

Mike

[nullzero]

I will keep you in mind if I get some good seeds my way. Best luck with the recovery, hoping for a speedy return to normal.

[pineislander]

Please PM me with what you do have and don't need & an address and the best way to send things to you. I spent some of the best years of my life on St. Croix and went through Hugo so I know. I spent quite a bit of time going through the videos post-Maria and looking closely at things on the post-Maria satellite images on the west end where I lived, and can see you took a very hard hit. I everyone good times as you get things back together.

[Future]

Thanks for the update.

Hurricanes are no match for your spirit.

It would be useful to know specific seeds you were after to better assist your renewal efforts.

[PahoaJo]

I don't have a lot, but I can offer seeds of rollinia, abiu, miracle berry, rambutan, mamey sapote. Please message me if you are interested in any of them and an address to send them to.

[Tang Tonic]

Thanks for the replies everyone I really appreciate it!

We lost our guavas, eggfruit, mesple (sapodilla), tons of pineapples, Meyer lemon, several avocado, several mango, a tangelo and tangerine, and a few jabos.

The bananas should come back quickly, the ice cream bean made it, guavaberry made it, alll of our dwarf coconuts got blown over but I was able to stand them back up.

I would love just about any kind of seeds people are willing to donate. I am looking at this as an opportunity to replace all the fallen trees with fruit bearers instead.

I will send pms individually.

 It's really a bummer looking at pictures before the storm. Enough time has passed where the shock has worn off and we have accepted the new landscape as normal. Rebuilding structures is easy and realively quick process. Replacing mature tees though is much more difficult and at the mercy time.

[johnb51]

I was wondering if all the native trees come back on their own on the islands after hurricanes like these. 

[pineislander]

I was there in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo with peak wind 168 mph. Many branches wrist size and smaller get broken off and many trees are uprooted, almost no leaves are left and salt burned, windblown branches sand and pebbles become projectiles and further damage trees. What remains that can re-sprout does and grass comes first. Vines go crazy given the light and bare trees to climb on. The biggest loss to many are the long-lived trees which get toppled and can't be set back. St. Croix settlers planted Caribbean Mahogany trees along roadsides to shield their horses and carts from the sun hundreds of years ago, and they became majestic Giants which will take many generations to replace. There are some giant Baobabs, Tamarinds, and Kapoks which may be OK. Some Saman (Monkeypods) which are very old may have been lost or damaged. The ubiquitous 'weed' tree is called Tan-Tan, Leucaena Leucocephala will definitely be back quickly along with a thorny Acacia farnesiana known as Casha. There are many ecosystems there ranging from near-desert on the windward side to somewhat dry 'rain forest' on the leeward. The leeward side was closest to the NE eyewall and suffered the most from what I see in video.

[Tang Tonic]

pineislander hit the nail on the head.  After the storm the lush tropical landscape looks like the dead of winter in the northeast, completely barren coupled with massive trees uprooted or snapped in half.  The grass is completely unaffected so when you see aerial footage from after the storm you see the barren landscape interspersed with these bright green patches of grass.

We have tons of beautiful and giant mahogany trees on St. Croix as pineislander pointed out.  Overall they are very strong and hold up to storms very well.  However they are no match for a Cat 5 and several large ones were completely uprooted.  I'm talking about 300-400 old tress that have seen countless storms.  I bet trees like this would live even longer but its probably big storms like Maria that cut their life short.    I saw one that was not only uprooted but some how lifted and flipped over so the roots were pointing straight up, crazy! 

I was really bummed my Lingum Vitaes did not make it because they grow so slow.  Pretty much the strongest wood in the world so I was really surprised to see what happened to the ones on my property.  Its like a hand from the sky came down and grabbed them and tossed them somewhere else.  No hole in the ground where they were or anything.  On the other hand, my friend on St. Thomas says he has a couple on his old Danish Plantation property with 2' diameter trunk that he says probably saved his house.  So maybe mine weren't big enough to have developed and extensive root system. 

Tbe black ironwood (Krugiodendron Ferreum) trees I have on my property survived which is also a native hardwood. They lost branches but did mostly ok. The West Indian Locust trees also known as stinktoe did very well.  There is a massive one near me that is easily 500' tall and it survived!  The Kapoks and Baobobs seem to have done ok, perhaps due to less windage.  We have tons of big mango trees as well and they do surprisingly well. 

The genips which are everywhere here don't do well at all but they come back quick even if they get snapped in half, those things are almost like weeds! 

Other trees which you would think would do well actually don't.  The Saman do not handle high winds, several large specimens just tossed over like toys.  Neem trees I have come to learn have a shallow root system and are toppled easily.  Tibet trees are the worst, they were coming down in Irma which was only tropical storm force winds for us on St. Croix.  Flamboyant aka Royal Poinciana are susceptible too high winds too. 

Unfortunately like pineislander mentioned the opening up of the canopy is allowing the vines, tan tan (Leucaena Leucocephala), Acacia, and manjack to thrive.  I know a place where there are tons of juvenile mahogany trees so I'm going to try and relocate them to my neighborhood so one day we will have a beautiful mahogany canopy.