The versatility of Calliandra
Tropical botany: the publications of the montpellier laboratory
Lessons from past deforestations
The snow pine
The forests of French Guiana
Coppice expansion
Calliandra: a versatile tree for the humid tropics Report of an ad hoc panel of the Advisory Committee on Technology Innovation, Board on Science and Technology for International Development, Office of International Affairs, National Research Council, US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), in cooperation with Perhum Perhutani, Jakarta, Indonesia. Washington, D.C. National Academy Press. 1983.
Reviewed by Robin Levingston
The 52-page semi-popular monograph on Calliandra calothyrsus Meissn, by an NAS panel is illustrated and enthusiastically written, and covers the tree's propagation, environmental requirements, performance, production, management and useful applications. The species was introduced from Central America to Indonesia in 1936 as a possible leguminous cover crop for coffee. Its present widespread use in densely populated Java relieves pressure on natural vegetation and assists in conserving the soils on the many steep slopes of the central mountain ranges and volcanic peaks of that island.
This tall, woody, leguminous shrub with a prolonged capacity for coppice production is attracting attention as a potential short-rotation artificial bush fallow capable of producing high-calorific fuelwood, fodder and nectar for honey. Calliandra tolerates a wide range of well-drained, slightly acid soils, altitudes of between 150 and 1500 m, and humid tropical climates of over 1000 mm rainfall.
The work provides 21 selected references - unfortunately, either only in English or with English summaries - along with details of seed suppliers and panel members and a useful list of BOSTID (Board on Science and Technology for International Development) publications. Because of this, there are some unnecessary gaps and inaccuracies - for example (p. 5), "no information has yet been collected about Calliandra's growth under different climatic and soil conditions", and (p. 20) "Calliandra's native range is in Central America.... It does not seem to have been studied or cultivated here". There are at least two studies from work in Central America that disprove these assertions: Especies con potencial para la reforestación en Honduras (J. Bauer, COHDEFOR, 1982) and Comportamiento de Calliandra calothyrsus en dos sitios en Costa Rica (CATIE. 1980).
Robin Levingston is an officer in the Forest Resources Division, Forestry Department, FAO, Rome.
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the Tropical Botany Laboratory of the Languedoc University of Science and Techniques, which began its activities in 1972. has made available to the public a publications catalogue.
Ever since its establishment, the laboratory has endeavoured to give its activities a certain well-defined orientation, comprising a graphic approach to plant forms and structures, with emphasis on the architecture of trees and forest profiles; the maintenance of close contacts with the tropics, with particular attention to the humid forests, mainly in Gabon, Guyana and Indonesia; a marked interest in the use of plants by people in tropical areas, and hence in the problems of the developing countries; and, finally, the propagation of its activities by seeking appropriate employment for its former students - an undertaking that has benefited a considerable number of them.
The catalogue and the list of the reports, theses and publications it contains are available free of charge, on request, from: Laboratoire de Botanique tropicale, Institut de Botanique, 165 rue Auguste Broussonnet, F34000 Montpellier, France.
Among the works cited, three in particular are worth noting:
"Premier temps de la regeneration naturelle après exploitation papetière en forêt tropicale humide (ARBOCEL-Guyane)." Doctoral thesis by H. de Foresta. 1981. 114p.
With the help of an imposing series of drawings and photographs, the author summarizes in this document the results of an eight-month mission in French Guiana. A plot of primary forest situated a few kilometres from the village of Sinnamary had been felled to obtain material for paper-making as an experiment. The author studies the appearance of this plot three-and-a-half years after felling and analyses the pioneer species characterizing its regeneration. The idea of architectural spectrum is here applied for the first time. Some suggestions are made on the most rational forms of logging to be adopted to obtain optimum regeneration.
"Autoécologie et développement de quatre espèces de bois commerciaux de la forêt de Sumatra Indonésie." Doctoral thesis by Tri Binarko Suselo. 1983. 100 p.
This work, also illustrated by many drawings and photographs and followed by an annexe consisting of forest profiles, investigates the vegetative growth behaviour of four useful species. Three species belonging to the relatively fast-growing genus Shorea, which account for more than half the wood exported by Indonesia, are analysed. The fourth, Eusideroxylon zwageri T & B. is an endangered species because its geographical distribution is very limited and demand for it is very great. The wood possesses a remarkable characteristic: it is so dense that it cannot float on water.
"Reiteration et construction des cimes chez quelques arbres de Malaisie." Diploma in advanced ecological studies V. Munsh and S. Bujadoux, 1981. 39 p.
During a two-month course in Malaysia, the authors of this study tackled the notion of reiteration as a growth strategy - a notion that represents a recent stage in the analysis of tree architecture. The work examines a certain number of individuals of the same species and identifies some architectural characteristics. It notes that reiteration does not occur in all species in the same way and that it is necessary to define the strategy suitable for the particular tree. Aerial photographs taken from the top of a tower in the forest of Pasoh enabled the authors to represent the highest reiterations in its canopy. Their observations are the result of research conducted in the arboretum of the Forest Research Institute of Kepong, the hevea plantations of the national Rubber Research Institute, and the forest of Pasoh.
Fay Banoun Rome
Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy. Eds R.P. Tucker and J.F. Richards. 1983. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina ISBN 0-8223-0482-1.
Reviewed by L. Roche
A book entitled Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy warrants serious attention. By any standard, such a title is all-embracing. enticing, and even exciting. One imagines a group of scholars and experts on the subject working for c many years on a definitive tome. the last word on the subject.
Not a bit of it. The editors of this book, a slight document of 177 pages. are made of different stuff. They work quickly, even racily. The idea is conceived not in the groves of academe but - quite literally, as the editors themselves freely acknowledge - in a pub. Nothing wrong with this, you may say, but for the fact that the resulting work, in both style and substance, and particularly the introductory section, carries with it the unmistakable signs of its origin.
In addition to a preface and introduction there are 10 chapters, written by separate authors, which for the most part constitute a series of case studies, of varying quality and interest, on aspects of agricultural development and deforestation in a number of countries. The geographic regions dealt with are, in order of appearance, the state of Ohio (United States), the US Pacific coast. the Philippines, southeastern Brazil. the Bombay Deccan and Karnataka (India). lower Burma, China, Japan. the western Himalayas and central Niger.
For whom was this hook written and what does it set out to prove? The editors give us an answer to the second question but not to the first:
We begin with the central hypothesis that in the course of the long nineteenth century before the cataclysmic global changes initiated in 1914. the steeply rising demand for production of agricultural commodities exerted by the core of metropolitan societies of Europe,
North America. and Japan was the most dominant cause of rapid depletion of wood and forest resources.
The entire introduction seeks by selected references to the articles in the body of the book, to justify this hypothesis, though the articles themselves do not. Indeed, the introduction goes further. It is replete with loaded epithets like "Western colonialism or neo-colonialism", "white penetration", "colonial development pressures''; epithets that shed no light on the subject but merely succeed in exposing the simplistic, ideological preoccupation of the editors.
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL IN GUYANA population growth speeds deforestation
AN EXAMPLE OF TROPICAL DEFORESTATION viewing the subject historically
The looseness of language, inaccurate statements, and indiscriminate use of emotive terms vitiate the introductory section of this hook, and consequently adversely affect the impact of the book as a whole. One example will suffice:
In contrast with these frontiers of white population in India and China great civilizations had long since brought river basins under the plough and had settled relatively dense populations. There the nineteenth century produced further land clearance for cash cropping including acceleration of older agricultural patterns into the interstices of old agriculture and onto higher hill land, more marginal for some agriculture but until European arrival heavily forested.
We do not have to read the relevant article in this book to know that Europeans had virtually no influence on deforestation in the hills in nineteenth-century China, and that the causes of deforestation in that country were altogether different and centuries earlier in origin. The principal results. for forestry, of the European presence in northern India in the nineteenth century were the setting up of one of the world's first and most effective forest services and the establishment of a system of forest reserves in the Himalayas and elsewhere in the subcontinent where forests were threatened.
So much for the views and comments of the editors. They are for the most part pretentious and unscholarly and merely detract from the general usefulness of the book, which does contain articles of valise. Six of the articles arc written by historians, two by geographers, and one by an economist. Despite their academic backgrounds it is clear that the authors of the various articles could not adequately cope with the objectives of the hook as originally conceived. There arc too many constraints.
In the first place. deforestation has been a continuous process from the dawn of history. Its causes and consequences have been the same through time and space. The principal cause. whatever the prevailing political arrangements. its nearly always the increased population density of humans and their domestic animals, with the consequent spread of agriculture. industrialization and urbanization over forest lands. Second. deforestation in modern times on a scale and rate significant in global terms is primarily a post-colonial phenomenon: and, again. the primary cause is massive population growth. At the onset of the twentieth century most of the tropical forests of the world were still intact.
Despite the contradiction between the book's stated intention and the factual information presented in its 10 chapters, there arc some important lessons here for economists and planners involved in the preparation of national development plans. The lessons are simple but, nevertheless, of very great importance. First, in developing countries, agriculture - particularly peasant agriculture - and forestry should be regarded as wholly interdependent land-use systems. Second, and closely related, the destruction of indigenous forests upon which local people traditionally depend (possibly 60 million in India alone) is often an important cause of rural unrest in our time, particularly when it is done before industry has sufficiently advanced to absorb at least part of the rural poor. Hundreds of thousands of people are deprived of a diversity of forest products and means of sustenance, and their traditional way of life is undermined.
As Adas points out in chapter 6 in relation to deforestation in lower Burma, "the lack of access to the many products once gleaned in the forest was one of the causes of agrarian unrest that signalled the breakdown of proprietor-based economy in Burma in the last decades of British rule''. A comment by Richards and McAlpin on the social consequences of deforestation in the Bombay Deccan and Karnataka (chapter 5) is worth quoting in full, for it sums up what might be said for many countries of the tropics about the consequence of deforestation for local people:
For the various castes of graziers, the disappearance of much of the uncultivated jungle meant a serious diminution of pasture for their flocks of sheep or goats. For the peasant cultivator. the recession of the woodland meant that firewood and thatching materials largely available to his father and grandfather for the labour of cutting and gathering now had to be purchased. For the petty village trader. drugs, dyes, tanning materials. alcohol, fruits, honey, wax and other forest products obtained cheaply, often on barter terms, from Bhils and other tribals, had become expensive and were no longer conveniently accessible. For all members of society the loss of nearby wooded lands eliminated one source of assistance for cattle and man in times of drought and dearth. In times of great extremity forage for cattle and food for humans could he found in the jungle.
Forest history now receives scant attention in the curricula of institutions engaged in offering formal qualifications in forestry. Perhaps that is why it is now rare to find specialists in this field who also have a forestry qualification. and why the contributors to this hook. as far as can he judged, are without forestry training. It may also he why so many developing nations do not seem to have learned much from the lessons of early deforestation in the industrial world. For these reasons, and because the hook does contribute to our understanding of the causes and consequences of deforestation, despite the efforts of the editors, it is recommended to all concerned with the future development of agriculture and forestry, particularly in the tropics.
Laurence Roche is Professor and Head, Department of Forestry and Wood Science, University College of North Wales, Bangor, U.K.
The cembra pine (Pinus cembra L.). L. Contini and Y. Lavarelo. National Institute for Agricultural Research. Paris. 1982. Illustrated with sketches. 197 p.
The five-needled cembra pine, to be found in several places on the subalpine slopes of the Alps and the Carpathians, was in France long considered the poor relation among species. In the past it was outstripped in popularity by the larch, whose wood does not rot and burns well. In this hook. Contini and Lavarelo try, with the aid of data provided by the National Forest Inventory and by their own tests, to revive interest in the French cembra pines and give them the same position they occupy in Switzerland. Italy, Austria and countries of the East.
RYE-NEEDLED STRUCTURE - a characteristic of Pinus cembra L.
Destroyed deliberately in fires set to make space for grasslands, and the victim of bad natural regeneration. the cembra pine declined over the centuries, giving way to other species. It grows slowly, reaching sexual maturity only after 40 to 66 years. Its heavy. wingless seeds are unlikely to he disseminated by the wind, and it generally does not propagate outside the cover of the mother plant.
Given the uncertain nature of its natural regeneration. it is often necessary to have recourse to reforestation. particularly by way of plants grown in nurseries, since grafting. hybridization and sowing have not proved effective.
However. in many respects the cembra pine is a wood of exceptional quality. In the Alps. it is the highest-growing species and the most resistant to drought, frost and strong winds. It performs just as well in shade as in sunlight. Its widely developed root system enables it to establish itself on very superficial soils. Moreover, provided it can find constant coolness there. this pine will even grow on bare rock. Thanks to these characteristics, the cembra pine is particularly suited to erosion control, watershed regulation and. because of its capacity to stabilize snow. anti-avalanche work.
While it is true that human pressure and mountain grazing, which have long constituted a serious threat to its survival. have diminished, a new and particularly acute problem is arising today a problem that the foresters of old had certainly not foreseen: cross-country skiing.
Fay Banoun Rome
Manuel d'identification des bois tropicaux, volume 3: French Guiana P. Détienne. P. Jacquet and A. Mariaux. Centre technique forestier tropical, Nogent-sur-Marne. 1982. Numerous illustrations. 315 p.
This handbook, the third in a series devoted to identifying tropical forests by their anatomy, is particularly important since it sets out to establish, perhaps for the first time, an inventory of the trees of French Guiana. The first volume in the series introduced a method of identification by the notching of punch cards, and the second applied this method to a vast selection of trees in Guinea and the Congo. The present work analyses the forests of French Guiana.
There was a need for researchers to undertake an anatomical study of species collected in the Guianese forests. Very little is known about the flora there. and growing interest is being focused on the development and utilization of these forest resources.
The classification adopted by the authors is, quite simply. the listing in alphabetical order of families. genera and species. with a minimum of scientific nomenclature, accompanied by the relevant common names. At the end of the manual is an alphabetical index of scientific names, followed by an index of common names.
This work cannot fail to interest both the anatomist, who will find in it valuable scientific information. and the lay reader wanting to gain some knowledge of Guianese forests, whose efforts will be facilitated by the use of common as well as scientific names.
Fay Banoun Rome
Culture de biomasse ligneuse taillis à course rotation. Prepared and published by AFOCEL (Association Forêt-Cellulose), Paris 1982. Numerous illustrations. 214 p.
Whether it was the sylvae caeduae of the Romans, who were quite familiar with the way some species re-propagate themselves from the stump, or the sylvae minutae of the Middle Ages on the outskirts of the forests owned by the great nobles, or, finally. the "short-rotation coppice" - as the technique is called today - the coppice method of exploitation is among the oldest known in forestry. But whereas the products sought after in bygone days were stakes or poles. today's industrial demand (chips and peeler logs) requires very high production per unit area.
The authors of this book - all AFOCEL research workers and foresters - have found that, if an annual biomass of 12 tonnes per ha (air weight) of dry matter is to be obtained at minimum cost in intensive cultivation in European climates. there must be available plant material different from that provided by the natural forest.
Taking the south of France as a trial area. AFOCEL has studied, in the course of 30000 tests, the behaviour and yields of a number of clones from Asia. America, New Zealand and several European countries. Research efforts have been concentrated on poplars. eucalypts. sequoias and some conifers and have shown that choosing considerably improved basic plant material is the only way of achieving the desired production levels.
The book concludes with a study of the economies of short-rotation coppice production, taking into account the different methods of working and the types of equipment at present used.
Research on this subject is obviously nowhere near completion. II probably never will he, if the need for wood for the energy, chemical and grinding industries continues to increase, as forecast by the futurologists, But it can already be said that intensive production of woody matter through short-rotation coppicing will almost certainly expand very significantly in future.
