T15 the survivor - 18 months and growing strong !

Planted in October 2013 with Tarn, T15 grows steadily and is now taller than me ! :D

It's now the tree that got the tallest among the ones I've planted in Bangkok streets, and one of the few survivors. Now it got that far, I'm confident it has a chance to be just as big as the other trees in the street ! 

A friend attracted my attention to the funny names of this tree : bastard poon tree, fetid sterculia, poon tree, skunk tree ! The very complete Sterculia foetida page from Dr. Giuseppe MAZZA's Nature encyclopedia http://www.photomazza.com/?-Encyclopedia-&lang=en will tell you all you want to know, but I can't resist copying an extract here :

The name of the genus comes from the Latin “stercus” = dung, manure, with reference to the unpleasant odour of the flowers and the leaves of some species; the name of the species, is the Latin adjective “foetidus, a, um” = fetid, stinking, with reference to the unpleasant smell of the flowers.

Exactly my kind of guerrilla street tree ! :D

Taller than my raised arm

#sterculiafoetida #thanonkhao #plantatreebangkok #plantatreebangkok #filterpollution #guerrillatreeplanting

T016 - Planting a tree next to a temple in a Bangkok street

Tree : T016
Specie : Sterculia foetida - สำโรง
Street : Thanon Phra Sumen 
Notes : Talked 10 minutes with a retired police officer on the virtues of trees and nature in general

After last post, Albert contacted me to do some guerilla tree planting together. He is quite an incredible guy : he came all the way here on his bicycle from  . . . Berlin ! It was a great honnor and pleasure to roam the streets around Khao San Road area with our bikes (mine has an engine) to find some right spots.

I had 2 Sterculia foetida left, T16 and T17

To my great great great shame, I post this only now, more than 6 months later...

Albert at work in Bangkok

 Digging compacted soil with a toy (I won't call that tiny spade a tool) is not easy. One often finds rocks, broken bricks, glass shards, etc... I totally forgot to warn Albert (I use gloves), and when digging, he almost instantly got a huge blister that burst inside his hand.

Attention to detail

There was some sort of a fair in the temple nearby (Wat Bavorn Niwet), most likely a funeral of someone important if I believe the colors of the cloth hanging on the wall, many neatly dressed people went in and out the temple. We have been quite popular, with students taking our pictures, an old lady clapping her hands at us, touts coming for a word or two, and a retired police officer chatting about how important it is to keep and plant more trees...

Watering after planting

Albert went back a few times to care for the tree, put more rocks around it to protect it, water it... Last time I passed in the street the tree was healthy and growing ! I'll publish pictures one day...

T015 - Planting 'Sterculia foetida' in Bangkok street

Tree : T015

Specie : Sterculia foetida - สำโรง

Street : Thanon Khao - ถนนขาว

Notes : as usual : tree doomed to terrible fate

On the way to work this morning, with a friend, we stopped to plant this nice little sapling :

Good care makes beautiful trees

Sterculia foetida

 Traffic was dense, as usual at this spot. One guy was stuck next to us, opened this window and asked us what we were doing, smiling. After we told him, he smiled wider, cheered us, and went away. A pick-up driver opened his window and shouted 'Thank you !' as traffic was carrying him to his duties.

Close-up on the recent local massacre (Alstonia scholaris - พญาสัตบรรณ)

Planting a tree here is, on the sidewalks of Bangkok, is not really a favor we're doing the tree. The above picture illustrates the fate they all have to endure periodically. To no avail, if you ask me. We can also see a municipality worker using a watering can (yes, a watering can) to spread herbicide all over the place (pavement and wall still wet on the right). We asked him to spare our sapling, to which he answered something like : "it's safe, I already done that spot".

We can still find on google street a reminder of what the street used to look like until about one month ago. Let me display these pictures, including a picture showing our unfortunate friend above, while still in all its glory.

Same street before they cut the trees
 Again, with T015 planting spot.

See you soon for some other street guerilla tree planting.