An enchanted place with hidden powers
It was a beautiful blue dusk. Beyond the plains the mountains rose two kilometres in to the sky, into the clouds that delicately clung to the steep, green slopes. This is Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries on earth and we rode by horseback through the fading evening light.
My friend taught me about the flora and fauna as we wandered across her land, of the birds, mammals, flowers and plants. Suddenly she motioned for us to stop and frantically pointed towards a large, brown creature about 50 meters from us lumbering through the grass. With a long nose, pointed head and tail like a palm tree leaf, giant ant eaters are curious and bizarre creatures. But it wasn’t this strange, almost mythical animal that caught my imagination that evening, it was a plain looking tree with hidden powers.
I’d never seen or heard of this tree before and as we tour past my friend tells me that it contains insulin and can be used to help treat diabetes. This tree, Curatella Americana, growing freely on the wet, hot plains of Colombia has the power to treat a human condition that is potentially deadly to around 42,000,000 people world wide*. Why?
The theory of evolution says that plants and animals adapt to create the characteristics they need. Many fruits are sweet and juicy so animals eat them and spread their seed, but why would this tree create a compound needed by millions of humans. Is it just a massive coincidence?
This tree is not the only plant with special powers. A compound in fox globes is used to treat heart conditions, a decorative herb, the Madagascan periwinkle, is used to treat childhood leukaemia and aspirin, that ubiquitous painkiller, is derived from the bark of willow trees**.
The natural world is full of things essential to human life. Of course, there are lots of things that bite and sting and could kills us too but the connections and inter-linkages seem too perfect and numerous to be an accident. I am not suggesting that these were created specifically for us, what I am suggesting is, to me, more mind bending. It suggests that we are truly living on a Mother Earth, that we and nature are connected in deep, fundamental ways.
We rode on in the warm evening air past the termite hills the ant eaters feast on, over thin brown trails that cross-crossed the fields, stamped by millions of tiny ant feet, through clear fast streams that cut through the verdant forest where the monkeys, armadillos and toucans live, across clearings where the sky above was busy with pairs of parrots flying in tandem to their nighttime roosts. In Colombia when you want to express that you love something you can say ‘Me encanta’, which literally means ‘it enchants me’. That evening horseback ride was enchanted and it made me realise that our natural world truly has special powers.
*Calculated based on the estimate of the number of people with diabetes who require insulin numbers take from this source: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-prevalence.html
**https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/essential-medicines-powered-by-plants.html
