COPY OF AN OLD ENGRAVING SHOWING THE CACAO TREE, AND A TREE SHADING IT.
(From Bontekoe's Works.)
CACAO TREES, SHADED BY KAPOK (Eriodendron Anfractuosum) IN JAVA.
(reproduced from van Hall's Cocoa, by permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.)
Many trees have been used: the saman, bread fruit, mango, mammet, sand box, pois doux, rubber, etc. In the illustration showing kapok acting as a parasol for cacao in Java, we see that the proportion of shade trees to cacao is high. Leguminous trees are preferred because they conserve the nitrogen in the soil. Hence in Trinidad the favourite shade tree is Erythrina or Bois Immortel (so called, a humourist suggests, because it is short-lived). It is also rather prettily named, "Mother of Cacao." Usually the shade trees are planted about 40 feet apart, but there are cacao plantations which might cause a stranger to enquire, "Is this an Immortel plantation?" so closely are these conspicuous trees planted. When looking down a Trinidad valley, richly planted with cacao, one sees in every direction the silver-grey trunks of the Immortel. In the early months of the year these trees have no leaves, they are a mass of flame-coloured flowers, each "shafted like a scimitar." It well repays the labour of climbing a hill to look down on this vermilion glory. Some Trinidad planters believe that their trees would die without shade, yet in Grenada, only a hundred miles North as the steamer sails, there are whole plantations without a single shade tree. The Grenadians say: "You cannot have pods without flowers, and you cannot have good flowering without light and air." Shade trees are not used on some estates in San Thomé, and in Brazil there are cocoa kings with 200,000 trees without one shade tree. It should be mentioned, however, that in these countries the cacao trees are planted more closely (about eight feet apart) and themselves shade the soil. Professor Carmody, in reporting[2] recently on the result of a four years' experiment with (1) shade, (2) no shade, (3) partial shade, says that so far partial shade has given the best results. No general solution has yet been found to the question of the advantage of shade, and, as Shaw states for morality, so in agriculture, "the golden rule is that there is no golden rule." Not only is there the personal factor, but nature provides an infinite variety of environments, and the best results are obtained by the use of methods appropriate to the local conditions.
CACAO TREES, SHADED BY BOIS IMMORTEL, TRINIDAD.