The crown of thorns of Medina Sidonia

Near 24 years ago I visited for the first time the small Andalusian city of Medina Sidonia located on a hill in the province of Cadiz. What it drew attention more to me was the extreme poverty of its houses, the dust and the burial silence of its streets without asphalting, the absence of cars, the abundance of wanderers flying and singing happy under a luminous  blue sky and a drought of its white earth. Nevertheless something in it captivated to me. I do not know to explain it, but I felt to pleasure. I had sensation to be in a magical place loaded of positive energy, old, sacred, cosy, eternal, as if the energy of the spirits of the hundreds of thousands of people who were born there, lived and died throughout its expanded history of more than three millenia was had accumulated in him. 

  

 Meadow in the outskirts of Medina Sidonia. Striking the attention the fence of aligned thorny nopal cactus with the olive trees of the bottom that they prevent that the cattle escapes. I made this photo 3 years ago in my second travel to Cadiz. It had rained in abundance and the vegetation was magnificent.

The occupation of the hill began with the first tartesic establishments at the end of the Age of Bronze, happening through the colonization of the Phoenicians coming from the distant Sidon who gave the same name him to the new city, followed by the Romans who called it Asida Caesarina Augusta. In the later visigotic domination was elevated to the category of capital of province with the name of Asidona. In year 712, after the Muslim conquest, it received the definitive name of Medina Sidonia and was capital of the Cora of the same name for more than 550 years. Finally, in 1264 it was reconquered by the Christian troops of King Alfonso X el Sabio and served as military base for the conquest as the nazari Kingdom of Granada. In 1440 it happened to be property of Dukes of Medina Sidonia. The present Duke is number XXII of the saga. 

Rural way of Medina Sidonia with the white earth like the snow and the ebullient fence of thorny nopal cactus of the right that serves to contain the cattle. The photo is done in the month of May of the 2008. The yellow flowers are seen crowning the shovels of the nopal that belong to the Mexican species Opuntia amyclaea.

Near 24 years ago in the outskirts of Medina Sidonia, when already I gonna, I found a small cactus similar to the typical nopal Opuntia ficus-indica but much more thorny. It would at the most have a dozen of shovels clearly dehydrated by the extreme drought that supported that year the earth of Cadiz. I did not see more nopal cactus. I suppose that few years ago they had begun to seed them as fence and had still not become the uncontrollable present plague. 

I have the custom to take an alive memory to me of all the places that have hit to me. So I stopped the rent car, I took newspaper leaves not to puncture myself and I took a small shovel to him to take it to me like memory. They were other times and in the airports there were no the present controls of the luggage. Nowadays it would be a recklessness to take a leaf of thorny nopal within the suitcase. I could finish before a judge by attack against the authority if the guard of the control of luggage puncture itself in the hand.

 Dangerous thorns of a shovel of nopal Opuntia amyclaea. After painful puncture of the long thorns the small ones that are very fragile and with small inverted hooks nail that act like a hook. When trying to extract they are broken them with facility and they are nailed within the epidermis, being able to cause an infection. It is understood since these nopal cactus are used like fences to contain the cattle that grazes in the meadows.

 Impressive fence of nopal to the side of a way. Many wild plants take advantage of the protection the thorns of this American cactus to live calm safe from maw on the cows, ewes and goats.

One of these plants is the gorgeous Aristolochia boetica. Their strange flowers are shown between the thorns to attract the pollenizer insects.

Another plant that grows next to the nopal is the poisonous Solanum linnaeanum (synonymous of Solanum sodomeum). This South African plant that has colonized all the Mediterranean region does not need the protection of the nopal cactus, because the animal know by instinct that is very toxic.

Beautiful flower and mature fruit of the South African Solanum linnaeanum, very frequent next to the nopal of the rural ways.

Gorgeous flower of Opuntia amyclaea when open. Its salmon color passes to an alive yellow lemon color when the flower is completely open.

The bees go greedy to suck the rich and abundant nectar of the nectaries of the bottom of the flower.

After the fertilization by the pollen transported by the bees, the ovary becomes an appetizing yellow fruit. The small dehydrated leaf that I took in Medina Sidonia flew with me until Majorca. I seeded it immediately and in few days it took roots, it rehydrated, it brought forth new shovels and in two years it gave me the first fruit, the one that you see in the photo. My exaggerated curiosity to prove new things took to me to peel it and to eat it. I assure to you that it was very taste. Its candy and substantial greenish pulp do not have anything to envy to the delicious pulp of the nopal Opuntia ficus-indica.

To peel a  prickly pear requires a special technique to avoid the irritating spines. My maternal grandfather knew well like doing it. Whenever the grandsons were going to see the parents of my mother who lived in the field, my grandfather gave to us with a stuffing of prickly pears. He had fruits of orange, mulberry and white color. 

  He had long pliers done with two united branches of olive tree in a point by a nail as a scissors. In the end of the pliers the two branches had been hollowed in the form of buckets and with them he took the fruits one by one, he put them in a bucket with water, he removed it and them with a wood so that the spines followed and at the same time those softened that had not followed. 

 Soon the full water threw of thorns to a young walnut and peeled the fruits on a block of arenaceous. He was happy seeing us enjoy those delicious fruits come from beyond the seas of distant Mexico.

He had such masters soon peeling those that hurried more than we eating them and we had one fruit in each hand and we did not give supply. 

When no longer we could eat more, one for him was peeled and threw the skins to the pigs. A spectacle was everything to see eat them raised on the wall of piggery. The thorns did not seem to matter to them absolutely. He had several pigs of Majorcan black race and a few of North American white race.

The pulp of the fruits of the Opuntia amyclaea of Medina Sidonia has a tuna clearly almost white green color. For my taste these fruits are refreshinger than those of the Opuntia ficus-indica of my maternal grandfather.

All the fruits of the cactus of the Opuntia sort are foods, are not poisonous, although some are very insipid or very acid. Those of the Opuntia linguiformis are very showy by their intense garnet color and are ideal to decorate a salad of exotic fruits, although they are very acid and with little sweetness.

Fruits of Opuntia linguiformis after washing them with water to retire the thorns. 

 Its intense garnet color dyes the fingers during several days. The cold fruits know better good, reason why it agrees to awhile put them within the refrigerator before consuming them. They are possible to be eaten to the natural or with a little sugar. 

Fruits of Opuntia ficus-indica. The left one of orange color is the most frequent variety. The garnet variety is more difficult to find. Both taste equal. 

The cactus of the Opuntia sort have become true uncontrollable plagues in all the regions of the world with Mediterranean and semi-arid climate. The frugivorous animals and the birds especially disperse to the seeds with their excrements far from the plant mother. They like much to colonize oriented rocky slopes to the south.

Here we see a Opuntia ficus-indica been born from a seed taken by a bird on these rocks burned by the sun in the coast the northwest of Majorca.

In Medina Sidonia the Opuntia amyclaea has been feral from the plants of the fences and has surrounded the city of a true crown of thorns in less than three decades. It is practically impossible to control it and much less to eradicate it. It already comprises of the asidonense flora. In my last visit three years ago the city had changed drastically, it had modernized and embellished. The surrounding field followed just as 24 years ago except in the edges of the property and the edges of the rural ways where the Opuntias the owners have become absolute.

One is asked who serves to whom and the answer is very simple. The Opuntias, like other many worked plants, use the man to proliferate and to colonize new territories, really, to survive and to perpetuate their species. We think we took advantage of them, we called them useful by its fruits, its grains, its beautiful flowers, its fibers, its wood, its tubercles and in fact are they who of a very intelligent and subtle way use to us blatantly in their own benefit.

Ceratonia siliqua, the fodder of Lapland reindeers

Indeed, the reindeers that throw of the sleighs of Lapland´s Eskimos feed on the nutritious sheaths of the carob tree, Ceratonia siliqua, a leguminous arboreal tree cultivated for several millenia in all the coastal zones that border the Mediterranean Sea. The poor and monotonous diet of the reindeers with coriaceous Arctic lichens complement themselves successful with triturated sheaths of the carob beans. The hard seeds were separated to use them like thickeners in the human feeding, pharmaceutical products and the chemical industry.   

Old and imposing carob tree of more than 150 years seeded by my great-grandfather in a cereal field of Majorca. It surpasses the 12 meters of height and its trunk measures more of a meter of diameter. During its long life it has given abundant harvests of carob beans. Making a simple calculation, if a normal year produces between 200 and 400 kilos of fruits, multiplying it by last the 130 years of its adult life, it gives a total of 40 tons of carob beans.

On the other hand, the mycorhizes of their roots in their average century and of life have fixed several hundreds of kilos of atmospheric nitrogen in the form of underground nodules that have enriched the poor, argillaceous, calcareous and stony ground where the roots are introduced.

Every spring is born several broods from small birds in the nests that the birds construct on their branches. A pair of hoopoes year after year takes advantage of a hole in the doubling trunk to bring to world one or two broods. The carob tree is, really, a complete ecosystem where hundreds of species of insects, arachnids, birds, small lizards and rodents find a comfortable habitat where to live, to feed themselves and to procreate.

Its dense foliage of dark and coriaceous leaves has given shade to my ancestors during many decades. At noon they sat down, we sat down, in the ground on coats of stuffed esparto of straw in the fresh shade of the old carob tree to eat bread with tomato, salt and olive oil, accompanied by sobrasada, parched cheese, botifarrones, camaiot, bacon roast on live coals, olives flavored with salt and fennel and a few figs dessert droughts, all this watered with a jet of red wine of own production drunk directly of a pumpkin of slim waist, Lagenaria siceraria, with a cork done with a small branch of olive tree. Memory with nostalgy the many sweet hours that I happened playing under this tree in my childhood and the flavorful thing and that felt like their carob beans to me. A pair of them filled the stomach to me and they cleared the hunger to me. They were my picnic. It accompanied sometimes them with some crude almond, that I cracked on a stone.

Carob tree of about 30 years loaded of still green fruits at the height of summer. These trees usually seed themselves in poor lands where they prosper without problems. Sometimes they are combined with other fruit trees like the fig trees, the almonds tree, the olive trees, the plum trees and the apricot trees, all of them very rustic trees that support well  poor and stony soil.

The carob tree is original of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Phoenicians and the Arabs extended their culture by all the Mediterranean river basin. It is a very resistant tree that supports very well the drought and the torrid sun of the summer. It prefers the good drained limestone grounds since their roots do not support flooded lands. The micorrhizal symbiontic fungi that surround their roots need to breathe to live. The static water prevents the soil oxygenation and drowns to the symbiotic fungi. Without filamentous and white hyphae of the fungus, the carob tree cannot absorb the water and the minerals of the ground and the nodules by the roots cannot fix the nitrogen of the air. It is understood since this enormous leguminous support better one releases drought that the water suspended in its roots, which would drown the micorrhizal fungi and it would suppose the death of the tree by starvation.

This dependency easily verifies when seeding seeds of Ceratonia siliqua in individual flowerpots. If the land of the flowerpot lacks spores of the symbiotic fungus, the small tree just born, after consuming the nutrients that the seed contained, stops growing, yellows, it languishes slowly and it ends up dying. In order to avoid that the young carob tree dies literally of hunger, it is sufficient with adding to the flowerpot a little earth picked up of underneath an old carob tree that contains thousands of spores of the symbiotic fungus, which germinate quickly, his hyphae surrounds the roots of the dying little tree and in few days the miracle takes place. The apical yolk appears vigorously and its growth is spectacular. If a few months later migrates the little tree to a greater flowerpot, is verified like its roots are surrounded by a species of white spiderwebs that smell of good earth. They are hyphae of the micorrhizal symbiontic fungi. Also small stuck gray small balls are the roots. They are the nodules locking devices of atmospheric nitrogen that contribute natural installment to the carob tree.

Bipennate leaves of carob tree, brilliants and coriáceas like of plastic, that is darkened as they age and they persist on the tree during several years before falling. The nutrients that contain incorporate to the ground when being disturbed they enrich and it and they puff up. Each leaf is formed by 5 pairs of leaflets. Raquis and the petiole of the tender leaves and the stem of the new buds have an alive dark pink color. 

Still immature carob beans in the middle of the summer. In this state they contain many bitter and astringent tannins that they avoid that the herbivores eat them before their complete maturation.

Branches of Ceratonia siliqua loaded of mature carob beans at the end of the summer. Usually they fall by themselves at the beginning of the autumn, but it is preferable to knock down them with twig blows at the end of summer on ample fabrics prepared under the tree, so that the first rains of the autumn do not rot them.

Fleshy cases of carob tree of a beautiful dark brown color at the beginning of the autumn. Usually they measure between 15 and 25 centimeters in length. The brown pulp that surrounds the seeds is very rich in sugars (until a 30%), proteins, fats, vitamins, pectine, mucilage and tannins. The reason is understood by which most of the production of carob beans of Majorca is exported towards Finland to feed the reindeer of Laponia, since they constitute an excellent very complete and nutritious fodder.

The pulp also is used in confectioner's like substitute of the chocolate. Mixed with wheat flour rich very spongy buns take control of her. The modern ices-cream dealer include the flour of carob bean in their chocolate ice creams and most bold they exclusively make ice creams of carob bean. Also an excellent sweet liquor can be done almost black letting ferment the flour dissolved in water to which grape grains are added to him to contribute necessary leavenings for the fermentation.

The carod seeds, calls "garrofines", are very hard and are surrounded by one cuticle shining raincoat to the humidity. This makes very refractory to the germination and at the same time it allows them to conserve his viability during 4 or 5 years. In the nature a short cut exists to accelerate the germination of the seeds: the passage by the alimentary canal of the herbivores that swallow them whole when not being able them to chew and disperses soon them with their lees. The acid of its gastric juice dissolves hard cuticle partially and facilitates the later hydration of the embryo that germinates quickly.

In the zone of Spanish Levante, for the production of establishments of carob trees in the breeding grounds, usually they are used the seeds gathered of the excrements of the cattle, since one knows that its germination is almost of the 100%. In industrial arboriculture on a large scale it is put under the seeds to the action of a sulfuric acid solution concentrated during one or two hours. Another method to break cuticle and to make it permeable to the water consists of submerging garrofines in boiling water and leaving them in soaking while it cools off during 24 - 48 hours. A simple very effective homemade method consists of cutting to a small piece of cuticle with a nail clippers to each carod seed in the cleared part opposed the germinal yolk. This simple method less than accelerates the germination in 10 days.

Carod seeds have a very uniform size and a weight. This characteristic drew attention of the old Arab and Jewish jewelers, used who them as unit of weight for their transactions of gold and precious stones. KIRAT called it with the Arab word = Carat. From KERATONIA comes the scientific name there to him = Ceratonia, that is to say, tree of the carats.

The carob trees can be masculine, feminine and hermaphrodite. Generally the nurserymen reject the masculine feet or graft by the methods of small shield or Majorcan chip with feminine or hermaphrodite yolks. Knowing him sexuality the carob tree is intelligent intercalary some masculine copy in the plantations from feminine carod trees. 

Inflorescences in the form of swab of a carob tree of masculine sex composed by finished lengths stamens in yellow anthers full of pollen, that leave in groups of six small cleared bases formed by the nectaries.

Masculine inflorescence of Ceratonia siliqua. The red central stem is seen very well del that they leave the cleared nectaries, each one of as surrounded by 6 stamens and its respective yellow anthers. The abundant nectar of the nectaries attracts the pollenizer insects, coverall to the bees that produce an excellent dark honey. I recommend to extend the photo with a double click. 

Inflorescences of a feminine carob tree, with the flowers without petals that leave a red central stem. Each flower has a nectary in its base, del that slightly arises pistilo curved and finished in a heavy sticky stigma, on whose surface stick grains of pollen transported by the bees.

 

Another feminine inflorescence at the end of summer, with the flowering slightly more delayed than the previous ones, because the nectaries without unfolding and nectar are still seen. 

Inflorescences of a hermaphrodite carob tree with stamens and pistils distributed throughout the red central stem. In order to avoid the self-fertilization, in the first place the feminine flowers with their nectaries filled with rich nectar are opened to attract the bees with the body covered with the pollen of the masculine flowers of another carob tree.

Another hermaphrodite inflorescence in feminine phase. Masculine stamens remains without developing with closed anthers to avoid the self-fertilization. The feminine stigmata wait for grains of pollen taken by the bees. Once the majority of feminine flowers has been fertilized, the stigmata are closed hermetically, their nectaries stop producing nectar and the growth of the small fruits begins.

After the fertilization of the feminine flowers, the masculine phase in the hermaphrodite inflorescences begins. Stamens are extended and the anthers of their ends are opened and begun to disperse pollen. In their base the nectaries produce abundant nectar so that the bees go and the pollen grains take on their body towards the stigma of the feminine flowers of another carob tree, feminine ones as hermaphrodite ones.

Detail of a hermaphrodite flower in feminine phase with the base round and flattened of the nectary with five stamens and the pistil. Stamens get ready around the nectary with orange anthers in their end. Pistil arises from the center of the nectary with a long curved style and the receiving stigma of pollen in its end.

The maturation of the fruits agrees with the flowering. In the photo the mature inflorescences of a feminine carob tree and their fruits at the end of the summer are seen.

After several decades of declivity in their culture, in the last years become to seed young, single or mixed carob trees with olive trees, almond trees and fig trees, because its operation is a business with few expenses and little manpower that can be profitable as of the second decade of the life of the trees.