My Entry for the #WorldPhotography Contest: Round #21/Trees of the World - The Autograph Tree

Warm greetings all! 🙏 💚

I've been letting the theme of this week's #WorldPhotography Contest, Trees of the World, percolate in my consciousness for a while today, and on a quick trip to Kehena (our locally beloved black-sand beach that has been traditionally clothing-optional since 1955), the subject for my entry this week visually jumped out at me. This is an autograph tree - Clusia rosea, growing up near the road, at the top of one of the two trails down to Kehena.

The autograph tree is a very curious plant in the Clusiaceae family. It gets its most common vernacular name due to the fact that it is very easy to etch text and drawings on its thick leaves, that can remain clear and visible for quite some time.

Two quite unusual things about this plant are that, firstly, it does not seem to have normal sexual reproduction. The flowers only have the female structures, pistils, and the tree reproduces by agamospermy, producing seeds (and seedlings) that are clones, or genetically identical, to the mother plant. Secondly, it begins life as a hemiepiphyte, with seeds often sprouting on rocks or on other trees (spread there by birds that ate its fruit), sending down copious roots to the soil, and then exploding with growth, strangling the host tree, behaving (and looking) similarly to banyan trees/strangler figs. This species is native to the Caribbean region, though it can be found growing in many tropical and subtropical countries worldwide now.

Like banyans, the autograph tree has many roots that come down to the ground from the branches, eventually becoming trunks in their own right. That's why it's a bit challenging in these photos to determine exactly what is a root and what is a trunk.

Thank you all so much for allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am deeply grateful! 🙏 💚

This image created by @doze, and the dividers made by @thepeakstudio, with all tweaked to their present form by me.