![]() ![]() See the Gumbo Limbo for yourself - and much more at Conservancy of Southwest Florida, 1495 Smith Preserve Way. So, I’ve decided that the gumbo limbo has another ‘magical’ quality - aside from growing 6 to 8 feet in 18 months, sprouting from branches stuck in the ground, and offering up medicines, it can also trick you into believing it is cool when, in fact, it is just as ‘hot’ as every other tree in the forest. The smoother a surface, the cooler it feels - has to do with efficient heat transfer - so, the heat moving from your pressed palm to the smooth trunk would actually make a gumbo limbo feel cool to the touch. I found papers on why an object might feel ‘cool’ when touched. Not wanting to give up, I did some hypothesizing. Now, why is that bark cool? I searched for articles explaining this, but found none. The wood is excellent for carving and has been the wood of choice for many years in making carousel horses. Scientists have even extracted chemicals from the tree that have been found to have anti-inflammatory properties in animal studies. The tree contains chemicals that have been used by native peoples as medicines for conditions like gout. Bearing abundant clusters of small fruit used as food by birds, the gumbo limbo is a fine addition to any landscape. Hurricane resistant, they are frequently used in landscaping projects as street-lining or specimen trees. ![]() They do not grow well in wet soil, but are salt resistant and grow well in sandy soil. It has amazing features - for example, branches just pushed into the ground will root it grows quickly, 6 to 8 feet from a seed in just 18 months, and attains heights of 50 ft. It is found from south Florida to northern South America, and Central America and the Caribbean. The gumbo limbo, a member of the Burseraceae family, is in the genus Bursera. It felt cool to the touch, and he told us that the gumbo limbo bark always felt cooler than other trees - and no one knew why. When we got to the gumbo-limbo, he stopped and gave a few facts, and then asked each of us to place our palms against the smooth trunk. No matter what you call it, the tree is fascinating, with attributes that make it unusual and attractive.īeing a transplanted Northerner, my first exposure to the gumbo-limbo was when I was being trained as a volunteer at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples - walking on one of their nature trails, the leader was describing plants and trees along the way. With ‘tourist tree’, you can understand the derivation - Bursera simaruba has smooth, greenish bark that peels off in thin reddish patches - like the winter tourists flocking to our warm Gulf shores, who forget to apply sunscreen - and leave to go back with patches of red peeling skin. Really? That’s the actual name of a tree? Not Cajun-spiced crawfish soup? ![]()
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