Tabunoki

Persea thunbergii

I now have Persea thunbergii in the collection, thanks to Steve Hootman of the Rhododendron Species Botanic Garden in Washington state. I had never encountered the hardy avocado until a few years ago when I walked past their specimen which was exhibiting mahogany-red new growth.

Persea thunbergii

I wrote what little I knew about the species in a past blog, and that in Japan it is known as tabunoki. No ki means "of wood" in Japanese, so hinoki is "wood of fire" according to my Japanese wife. I enlisted her to explain the tabu word, and as usual I didn't get a simple answer. I used to wonder if my wife deliberately obfuscates me, i.e. makes things less clear and more difficult to understand...than is necessary. But often she's not sure unless she can see the characters, and even then there can be multiple choices as to a word's meaning.

Persea thunbergii

Persea thunbergii is native to Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines and South Korea. Haruko thinks – with the assistance of her Japanese internet – that tabu is derived from Korean tong bai for "log boat"...or tamai no ki for "soul," as in a "spirit tree." But then many Japanese believe that all trees have a spirit, and I guess I also feel the same.

Southern Bluebottle (Graphium teredon)

I'm told that the Persea wood is used to make furniture, and also that a powder is made for incense to repel mosquitos. P. thunbergii produces little black, bitter seeds that no one wants to eat, but birds do and they distribute the seed via their poop. The genus is in the Laurel family, similar to the Cinnamomum genus, and indeed the southern bluebottle butterfly (ao sujiageha) is attracted to both genera. In the International Dendrological Society's 2019 Yearbook, mention is made by contributor Marcel Robischon that P. thunbergii "is often used as a rootstock for grafting avocado selections [of the food avocado P. americana*], but also has a traditional use to stupefy fish for catching."

Megatherium americanum

*An interesting aside is that Persea americana, with it's unusually large seed, evolved at the same time as the now-extinct giant ground sloth, Megatherium americanum (meaning "great beast") in South America. The herbivore would eat the entire fruit and the seed would pass through its body whole, and when excreted a pile of sloth fertilizer would nourish the germinated seedling. Megatherium is thought to have gone extinct around 12,000 years ago, coinciding with the settlement of the Americas, and it suggests that hunting could have caused its extinction.

The Tabunoki tree in Ibaraki Prefecture

The Tabunoki tree in Ibaraki Prefecture

In Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, a Persea thunbergii is said to be between 700-2,000 years old, and the locals worship it as a "fire-stopping" tree, but my wife couldn't really explain that part of the story.

Amentotaxus argotaenia

Again, thanks to Steve Hootman for the Persea tree, and I gifted him an Amentotaxus argotaenia which I have blogged about before here. If anything in this blog is not factual please let me know. The next time I visit Japan I will seek out the great Tabu no ki at Ibaraki Prefecture and try to learn more.