Update on spirit trees.

Those interested in the culturally rich and visually captivating trees of the Virgin Islands will want to check out the developing USVI Register of Big Trees, now online at www.bigtrees.net.

The USVI Register of Big Trees is sponsored by the University of the Virgin Islands and funded by the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program. V.I. Department of Agriculture. The focus is on trees that have served as mediators between mundane human life and spiritual or ancestral realms. These are classed as spirit trees and are identified as such by various authors and informants. (For more on this project: www.americanforests.org/productsandpubs/magazine. Click on archives and Autumn 2003)

Fifteen of the most noteworthy will be selected as "Landmark Trees" for inclusion in the Virgin Islands Registry of Historic Buildings, Sites and Places; onsite plaques will tell more about each.

Also in the works: an eco-heritage guidebook ID'ing the islands' most remarkable big trees. It will have maps, GIS locators, historic and contemporary photos, descriptive and cultural information. The book is due in 2006; for information, e-mail me: [e-mail].

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Spirit or jumbie trees are homes of ancestral spirits; these trees generally represent dual values and can be spiteful or playful, according to how they are treated or the vagaries of the moment.

Spirit trees take many forms but the most familiar are the silk cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and wild fig (Ficus trigonata, Ficus citrifolia, or Ficus spp.), which enslaved West Africans found when they crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Baobab and tamarind, spirit trees of the West African savannah, were introduced to the Caribbean, and enslaved Africans soon ascribed spiritual status to Caribbean trees such as West Indian locust and West Indian cedar. Spiritual status was also accorded trees--such as the gri-gri (Bucida buceras), whose name refers to magic--that reminded them of African trees.

Historically, the silk cotton is the paramount jumbie tree, although it has come to be rivaled by the tamarind. Those connected with the big trees project are gathering the trees' stories through interviews with elders and experts and by locating, photographing, and measuring the trees.

When Christopher Columbus observed the Caribbean islands during his first Atlantic crossing in 1492, he wrote, "I've never seen such a beautiful thing, full of trees, beautiful and green, and different from ours." The Virgin Islands can never return to their pristine pre-Columbian condition, but much can be done to reinvigorate rare native species, protect spirit trees, and highlight remarkable specimens. Projects such as USVI Register of Big Trees aim to do just that.