![]() ![]() However, did he carry out controls and try to germinate calvaria seeds without feeding them to his turkeys? No, he apparently had not done that. No doubt Dr Temple’s idea ( if in fact it was his, because some critics stated that he was told by local folk that dodos might have eaten the seeds) was great a very nice example of plant and animal dependency, known as mutualism. Dr Temple had the joy to see the first “baby calvarias” produced in 300 years – or so it seemed. When seeds did appear again they were without the tough endocarp and 1/3 germinated. Fortunately some of the remaining 13 tress were still producing fruit and Dr Temple collected some of the 5 cm large yield, covered by an extremely tough and woody outer layer, and force-fed them to domestic turkeys, hoping that the birds’ gizzard would do the trick and anxiously awaiting for the re-appearance of the seed at the other end of the bird. It is in fact by this method that many plants spread and disperse. Many plants, he mused, produce fruits that are eaten by birds who digest the fruit flesh of the seed’s outer cover, the endocarp, but leave the seed’s ability to germinate untouched. Its relative, the solitaire ( Pezophaps solitaire) on Rodrigues Island fared no better.įollowing the disappearance of the dodo, forests of the calvaria tree also began to decline and it was the American Dr Temple who felt that perhaps not the reckless deeds of wood choppers, settlers and ship builders were to blame, but that the dodo had something to do with the decline. In fact, so rapid was its demise, it never had time to acquire any sense of fear and in 1681 the very last dodo was bagged. The dodo was plump and tasty and did not fear people when Portuguese sailors began to visit the island in 1507. He championed the idea of co-evolution of the tree with the extinct dodo bird ( Raphus cucullatus), a grotesque-looking, turkey-sized, flightless pigeon also found only on that island. Temple, who claimed he had discovered why the tree Sideroxylon grandiflorum (then known as the calvaria tree) was no longer reproducing and in 1973 only 13 such trees were left on the island Mauritius, the only place in the world this tree could be found. When I was a young Senior Lecturer in New Zealand an interesting article had appeared in the prestigious journal “Science” by a certain Dr Stanley A. A nice example of plant/animal mutualism or bad science? ![]()
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