What is the name of the tree that grows in the Philippines, the nut of which contains - In the Philippines, a tree called hanga grows. However, more recently it has also been called the "oil tree". Why is this tree called that? Oil tree or hanga tree

Philippine canarium (Canarium ovatum) - one of the types of canarium. It is an evergreen tree reaching up to 20 m in height.

The leaves are pinnately compound, smooth, shiny, entire, composed of 5-9 small oval leaves with a pointed apex.

The flowers are yellowish or light brown, collected in dense panicles. Grow from the axils of the leaves and on the top of the shoots.

Canarium fruits

The fruit of the canarium is an oval or cone-shaped drupe up to 8 cm long, weighing up to 50 g. It is covered with a thin, smooth skin of a black-red hue.

The pulp is dense, fibrous, with astringent taste. Inside contains a brown spindle-shaped bone, covered with a hard shell. The stone contains a white dense core with a nutty taste.

Some individuals have bitter, fibrous kernels with an unpleasant odor.

Cultivation of the Philippine Canarium

The Philippine canarium is cultivated in the countries of Southeast Asia and the Philippine Islands, for which the plant got its name. The crop is grown commercially for seeds with edible kernels called "pili nuts".

Application of the canarium

The kernels of the fruits of this plant are eaten. Raw, they resemble roasted pumpkin seeds, but when roasted, they taste like nuts or almonds. Fried canarium is added to various dishes, pastries, chocolate. Oil is obtained from raw kernels.

Young shoots and fruit pulp are also edible. The shoots find use in salads, and the fiber is used after cooking and drying. Boiled fruit fiber has an oily texture, which is reminiscent of sweet potato. The nutritional value is superior to that of avocado.

The shell of the nut burns well, therefore it serves as fuel. Resin is extracted from the bark of the tree, which is used for economic purposes.

The wood of this tree has a beautiful pinkish hue, has no defects, is easy to dry and process. It is used to make packaging boxes, sheathing, flooring and other products.

In the nature that surrounds us, quite often there are breathtaking unique phenomena. Miracles happen almost everywhere, and for many phenomena, a person still does not have any reasonable explanations.

But most of the amazing phenomena we have the opportunity to observe only in certain places - where there are special conditions created by nature.

Eucalyptus is native to Mindanao.

Take, for example, the Philippine Islands. This is one of those places where nature has not stinted on miracles, and a person can enjoy incredible phenomena everywhere.

The Philippines gave the world whole forests of colorful bright trees, when you look at them you understand that you are in a fairy tale. These trees are called, this miracle of nature is the rainbow eucalyptus.

Since childhood, we all believe that Australia is the birthplace of such a tree as eucalyptus. But this is not entirely true.

If you take the rainbow eucalyptus, then its homeland is a Philippine island called Mindanao. In these places, it may seem that the magician took a huge brush and walked through all the trees with colorful paints!

Eucalyptus bark

The rainbow eucalyptus got its name from its bark. He actually resembles a rainbow and shimmers with all rainbow colors: red, orange, yellow, brown, blue, purple, purple and green.

For this very reason, the word rainbow has become the most appropriate name for these amazing trees.

It fully characterizes this rich spectrum of colors and shades of bark. The tree can reach a height of 75 meters, and the diameter of the trunk is more than two meters.

Eucalyptus and its coloring

If any of you manage to see this tree up close, you immediately get the feeling that its bark is as if painted with multi-colored paints. As if an abstract artist did his best here.

But the thing is that only mother nature worked here - she created all these unthinkable spots and stripes.

All these multi-colored overflows are intended by nature in order to show the age of a given tree.

The thing is that in these trees the bark tends to peel off often, but not in a completely whole plate, but only in small strips.

At the place where the piece exfoliated, a bright greenish spot instantly forms, some time passes, and the bright green spot becomes darker, changes its original color first to purple, then yellow, brown, blue, and last but not least this the area becomes bright orange or brown-crimson.

Where does eucalyptus grow

The rainbow eucalyptus is the only species of this tree that grows in the northern hemisphere and was discovered over a hundred years ago. Time passed, and the seeds from this plant were brought to South America, China, Malaysia, and even to many points of the globe with a temperate climate.

There they took root well, due to the fact that this tree perfectly tolerates the local climate, which cannot be said about its other species.

Despite the ability to exist in a temperate climate in its homeland, the Philippine Islands, the rainbow eucalyptus grows in the humid tropics and is an evergreen tree.

Today this wonderful tree can be seen in New Britain, the forests of New Guinea, Sulawesi, Seram.

Eucalyptus height

But not only the coloring, unique in every sense of the word, brought fame to this tree. He has another uniqueness - this is height.

A large number of rainbow eucalyptus trees reach a height of seventy meters, but such growth is not the limit for this tree.

You may not believe it, but individual specimens can reach ninety meters in height. And one more fact is truly amazing - in a year such a tree grows no less than ten meters. This is a real record in the plant world.

By all appearances, it turns out that we live in a phenomenal world, the mysteries of which have not yet been even half solved, and new wonders are being revealed to people again and again.

In the Philippine Islands, there is a tree that has long been known in the oil industry. And its name is appropriate - oil tree. The locals call it hanga and use the oil of its fruit instead of kerosene.

This miracle tree grows in the Philippines, especially in the undeveloped area located near the Mayon volcano, which is located in the southeast of the main island of Luzon near the city of Legazpi.

The oil tree got its name due to the fact that its fruits smell like kerosene and in addition to this, they easily ignite from a lit match. Therefore, local residents use these nuts to light their houses in the form of torches or candles.

Such unusual properties for a plant are caused by the high content of hydrocarbons in its essential oil, especially heptane. The advantages of such a "biofuel" is that it does not require distillation and in automobile engines this oil emits less toxic emissions than gasoline.

Now local authorities are seriously thinking about making the oil tree one of the main sources of combustible materials that were previously obtained from oil. In the Philippines, even a plan has already been developed to create extensive plantations of this tree, where it is supposed to receive the necessary biofuel already on an industrial scale. Thus, it is planned to reduce oil production from the bowels of the earth, where there is very little of it left anyway.

This tree comes from the genus of resin seeds, which includes about 200 species.

Philippines (Republic of the Philippines)

Territory - 299.7 thousand km 2. Population - 43.7 million people (1977 estimate). The climate is subequatorial, oceanic, in some places monsoonal. The average annual temperature is 25-26°. The amount of precipitation is 1000-4000 mm per year, in the inner valleys - 800-1000 mm. Devastating typhoons are frequent.

The forest fund is represented by tropical rainforests, which occupy 46% of the country's territory. There are more than 3 thousand tree species in them, of which 60 species are of commercial value.

The forests of the Philippines are divided into several categories. In terms of area (up to 75% of the forest fund of all the islands) and in terms of timber stock, the most significant are tropical rainforests located in the lower mountain belt up to a height of 500-800 m. They consist of complex multi-tiered forest stands with an upper layer height of 40-50 m. many large evergreen trees, palms and lianas of economic importance. Valuable species are harvested in them, giving solid wood of various shades - from light yellow to dark brown. The most common species are representatives of the dipterocarp family of the Shorea genus (they make up almost 50% of the stock of these forests): tanhile, or many-seeded Shorea (Shorea polysperma), Mayapis, or Palosapis Shoreya (Sh. palosapis), red luan, or Negro Shoreya (Sh. negrosensis), guijo, or guizo shoreya (Sh. guiso), almon, or almon shoreya (Sh. almon), as well as pentacme - white luan (Pentacme contorta), giving almost 20% of the stock of dipterocarp forests; from the genus dipterocarpus - apitong, or large-flowered dipterocarpus (D. grandiflorus), with hardwood, widely used in the construction of buildings; from the Khopei family - yakal with a very hard and durable wood used in the construction of bridges. Of the legumes, there are large narra trees, or Indian pterocarpus (Pterocarpus indicus), as well as erythrophleum, or Philippine redwood (Erythrophleum densiflorum).

In drier places, mainly on limestone soils, sparse tropical vitex forests of small-flowered prune, or molave ​​(Vitex parviflora), are widespread; other valuable breeds are also found there: pterocarpus, pahudia (Rahudia rhomboidea), intsia (Intsia bijuga), albizia akle (Albizzia acle), etc.

Above 800 - 900 m, tropical mountain forests stretch, dominated by evergreen oaks (Quercus luzoniensis, etc.), myrtle, maple, ancient coniferous stems (Podocarpus glaucus and P. pilgerii), Wallich yew, tree ferns (Cyathea contaminans, etc.). ); in the undergrowth - evergreen shrubs, in the ground cover - numerous stemless ferns, mosses, lichens. The belt of mountain moss forests is closed by low-growing oaks, eugenia (Eugenia acrophila), thorny evergreen shrubs, including individual trees and groves of yew (Taxus wallichiana), podocarpus, maples (Acer niveum). Tree branches are covered with mosses and lichens.

In some places, especially in the northern part of the island of Luzon, at an altitude of 1000 to 2000 m, pure pine forests grow, consisting of island pine (Pinus insularis) and mercus (P. mercusi), the wood of which is widely used for logging (props) ) used in gold mines. In the mountains, there is a coniferous almasiga, or white agathis (Agathis alba), which gives valuable copal resin for the manufacture of drying oil, varnishes, linoleum coatings, and is also used in the production of parchment paper, sealing wax, soap, etc.

The estuaries and gently sloping seashores in the tidal zone are characterized by mangrove forests and thickets of Avicennia officinalis, Rhizophora mucronata, Bruguiera parviflora, and Sonneratia spp. Along the edge of the mangrove forests, the nipa palm is often found. The wood of the mangrove trees is used for fuel, and the bark is used to produce tanning extracts. Along the sandbars behind the tidal strip, in many places, coastal forests have been preserved, consisting of terminalia catappa (Terminalia catappa), variegated erythrina (Erythrina variegata), barringtonia (Barr ington ia asiatica), calophyllum (Calophyllum inophyllum), horsetail casuarina (Casuarina equisetifolia ), as well as roofing pandanus (Pandanus tectorius).

A significant area is occupied by coconut palm plantations, the total number of which has reached more than 170 million trees. The collection of copra from them amounted to 1.7-1.8 million tons.

Since 1768, the textile banana (Musa textilis) has been bred in the Philippines. From its leaves, a strong fiber is obtained - "Manila hemp", or abaca (collection in 1975 - 125 thousand tons), which is exported in significant quantities. Rubber plants, coffee tree, edible bananas (collection - 1.2 million tons), pineapples, sugar cane, rice are also bred.

The forest fund of the country is 15.9 million hectares, including forest area - 13.8 million hectares, of which 12.7 million hectares are occupied by closed forests. Most of the forests (96%) belong to the state, the rest (4%) belong to private owners. The forests are dominated by mixed deciduous stands: they occupy 98.5% of closed forests. The share of mangroves accounts for 450 thousand hectares, or about 3%, conifers - 205 thousand, or 1.5%.

The total stock of wood (with a tree diameter exceeding 15 cm at chest height) is 1990 million m 3 . The average stock of timber per 1 ha is 124 m 3 , of which 70 m 3 in coniferous forests and 124 m 3 in deciduous forests. Wood harvesting is carried out both for domestic needs of the country and for export. The total volume of logging in 1973 amounted to 34.9 million m 3 , timber, including commercial timber - 13.8 million m 3 (for export - 7.7 million m 3 ). From it produce lumber, plywood, wood boards, cardboard, paper. In addition to wood, the country's forests provide a variety of forest products: tannin extract of catechu, resins, rosin, gutta-percha, rubber, oils, rattan, fibers, wax, medicinal raw materials (in particular, for the treatment of leprosy, rheumatism, for neutralizing poisons, exterminating harmful insects, etc.). d.).

Forest management is carried out by the Bureau of Forestry (Forestry Development Bureau). The territory of the country is divided into forest districts with departments in administrative centers, which are subordinate to forest stations and forest nurseries. Protective forests are allocated on the tops of the mountains. Forest cultures occupy more than 175 thousand hectares, including pine cultures - 40 thousand hectares. Plantings are carried out annually (1972-1974) on an area of ​​12-13 thousand hectares.

In order to protect natural resources, on the basis of a 1953 law, the Philippines organized the Committee for the Development of National Parks, under which 42 national parks (235 thousand hectares) and several reserves were created. The largest is the Apo National Park (77 thousand hectares) on the island of Mindanao. It is protected by tropical forests with a large number of orchids. Selected parks on the country's largest island - Luzon. These are Banahao-San Cristobal, Bikol, Bulusan, Data, Isarog and others. The area of ​​each park is 5-10 thousand hectares. They protect tropical evergreen, dipterocarp, pine, palm, humid mountain coniferous forests with tree ferns, volcanic mountains with active volcanoes, etc.