Schmoo Tree

It gives food and fuel

With a tall, slender trunk and a ragged umbrella of drooping green leaves, it looks like a mimosa. But the tropical Leucaena leucocephala is a bit different from other trees: in tropical climates it grows as high as 65 ft. in five years. That makes it a prime candidate for reforestation projects in overlumbered and wood-short Third World countries. The tree is also sort of a botanical schmoo;* undemanding itself, it provides a bountiful array of foods and fuels.

That is the word being spread by Forestry Expert Michael Benge, an employee of the federal Agency for International Development, who has become a bureaucratic Johnny Appleseed for the leucaena. Benge reports that in some tropical lands, leaves from the tree are eaten like candy by children and, dipped in a pepper sauce, as a tasty hors d'oeuvre by adults. Its seed pods are chewed or stewed or painted as tourist trinkets; the seeds can be ground as a surrogate for flour or coffee. Better yet, the leaves can be used for protein-rich cattle feed, and nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots help to fertilize the soil. Because of its rapid growth, the tree could become a vital source of the firewood still used to cook food by 75% of the world's population. Its wood can be processed into charcoal or a flammable gas--or used for building houses and furniture and making paper pulp.

The secret of the leucaena's rapid growth is in its roots; they extend as deep as the tree is tall. That enables it to soak up nutrients below the reach of other plants. Growing on the leucaena roots are fungi called mycorrhizae that help by absorbing phosphorus compounds that cannot be used by most plants, and converting them into forms that can nourish the tree. Then too the steady dropping of leaves provides rich nutrition for other plants.

For Benge, the leucaena has held a fascination since the mid-1960s, when he learned of it on an agricultural project in Viet Nam. A prisoner of the North Vietnamese from 1968 to 1973, he returned to the U.S. and helped herald its wonders to a growing list of tropical countries suffering deforestation. A group of Haitians now plans to grow 12,000 acres of leucaenas. The Philippines has its own ambitious leucaena program; so too do India and Indonesia. In fact the only signs of indifference Benge has found are in his own federal agency. But he will not be deterred. "They say, 'All you do is talk about leucaena,' " he reports of his superiors. "I say, why not go with a winner?"

* A mythical Al Capp creature that provided Li'l Abner and friends with unlimited supplies of milk, butter and eggs.

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