A couples of months ago, I planted a bunch of baby engkala trees (Litsea garciae) on the neighbour’s land in order to fight back against the grass. I’ve never planted engkala before this, but supposedly it works. I planted the trees along the edge between the area that they farm and the area used as cow pasture. There is NO canopy cover over there, no shade at all, but fortunately there were still some dead leaves from the native trees that they had cut down, so I could at least mulch around the babies.
The days immediately after I planted them were unseasonably hot and sunny with no rain at all, and it looks like they got burnt pretty badly in the sun. The neighbours also seem to have stepped on some of them and sprayed that whole border area with glyphosate (so all the other vegetation is dead), but against all odds, every single engkala is alive and putting out new growth. I think that’s awesome. Everything is trying to kill them, and these trees just say “FUCK YOU. WE ARE ENGKALA. RESISTANCE IS FRUITILE.”
Engkalahu akbar!
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How tasty are them? Those fruits are so colourful
Very tasty! Not on the level of something like durian or chempedak, but very creamy and savoury and satisfying. Fairly easy to make a meal of them. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, not in the sense that isn’t appealing from the start, but in the sense that it gets better and better each time that you eat it. Highly recommend.
I’m not sure I favor your tactics. The neighbors are just as likely to cut them down. You could tall to them about the importance of shaded areas for cattle, and offer to pant some fruit trees there that would provide that and fruit to boot.
Sometimes I do ask neighbours for their permission to plant fruit trees on their lands for our mutual consumption, but I don’t negotiate with animal abusers.
If your actions result in nothing, do they still carry any meaning?
Sure. I take pride in planting fruit trees regardless of the result. Plus, anything that makes life more difficult for the cattle ranchers means that they have less time and energy to devote to cutting down more of the forest. But I suspect that at least some of the engkalas will survive to adulthood. They want to sell that land anyway.