take in the various tropical plants that CATIE has collected from other parts of the world in order to study their growth, development, and potential dangers. All of this was encompassed in a botanical garden. Here are a few items from our walk through.
Here is a picture of the flower from a passion fruit plant. One minute I saw the closed plant and then the next, it was open. Apparently, each of the different sections of the plant represents a different part of Jesus Christ's crucifixtion (the Passion of the Christ like Passion fruit).
We basically walked all alround this massive collection of different types of palm, bamboo, macadamia nut trees, etc. Below I am holding the fruit from the Cacao tree (used for chocolate, coco butter, etc). Within this, there are these edible seeds that are covered in this gooey white stuff that can be sucked off. To me it sort of tasted like a banana, but not as strong.
There were some other peculiar plants such as one called "sleepy heads". When these leaves are touched, they close together (like a response to a stimuli). It was kinda weird to see a plant move as if it was trying to close and get away from you but it was neat to see. One plant called the miracle fruit can be eaten in order to turn sour foods into sweet. (We tried it and it really did work out, however, I am not sure about why that is so.) Another tree we saw produces the stinky fruit. It's called that because the fruity is one of the worst smelling in the world, but apparently it tastes great. What a conundrum. Also, we saw bamboo shoots that were all together as big as my house.
Other things that we saw include star fruit, chesnut trees, acaí berry trees, ylang ylang (found in many body smell goods like perfume, lotion, etc)
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