10/10 Ian Elgie knows about the #Iroko or #Mvule tree as he and the Eastbourne United Nations Association are very involved in the Mvule Tree Planting project in #Uganda. This is an #Offsetting scheme which, of course, many are rightly super sceptical of, but anyway, here the link in case you are interested. Helping to plant #Mvule trees in Uganda probably a good thing?

https://www.unaeastbourne.org/store/p2/Carbon_Offset_Tree_Planting.html

7/x But of course #Iroko has, in fact, been logged extensively for many years, since early colonial days - it was promoted energetically by the colonial forest department as a durable hard wood & became one of Nigeria's 5 most popular timber exports.

So this is a good example of how, in practice, you often have a plurality of different ways of relating to trees or animals in one place - the environnmental anthropologist Brian Morris wrote about this kind of #Pluralism, to me really important.

6/x If someone does cut down an #Iroko tree, the punishment can be terrible, specially if it is a sacred Iroko trees in a shrine.
This is what happened in 2018 to the people of Iguoma in Edo State (former #BeninKingdom), when the pastor cut down a sacred Iroko tree planted 500 years ago. #ThickTrunkTuesday

https://effiezy.com/2018/03/25/benin-residents-are-being-killed-by-a-sacred-iroko-tree-that-was-cut-by-a-pastor/

3/x The #Iroko tree is rich in meaning: Edo people believed Azen (witches) had their lairs in Iroko trees, one reason for not venturing into forests alone. There are also many #Yoruba stories about Iroko trees, for example "Olunronbi and the Iroko Tree" #Folktales #Mythology #Nigeria

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNi5EfsfK8s

2/x #Iroko (Milicia excelsa) grows in tropical African forests but as a light-demander it thrives in openings and on abandoned farmland - it was through centuries of shifting cultivation that Nigeria's forests were rich in Iroko. Here a picture I took one near Iguesogba in #EdoState - a very nice reminder of some wonderful months I spent largely walking round, guided by two different really great "assistants" and now dear friends, learning about the #HistoricalEcology of Edo landscapes

For today's #ThickTrunkTuesday, a second mini-series on the "Social Life of Trees" (borrowing this from Laura Rival). Today it's the #Iroko Tree, as it is known in West Africa, or #Mvule in Uganda - #MiliciaExcelsa. It is a tree I know well from my PhD fieldwork in Edo State in #Nigeria in the early 2000s, and, and one that is good for "thinking through" (slightly paraphrasing Maurice Bloch) human-nature relations
#EnvironmentalAnthropology 1/x

Emeka Ajene :

#Iroko is very interesting — I wrote this article in 2017 when they were focused on #Nigeria: https://afridigest.com/how-nigerias-iroko-increasingly-embraces-african-customers/

But after being “scammed by the giant of #Africa narrative” 🇳🇬🙃, it now focuses on the #diaspora — particularly its #1 market, the #US

https://twitter.com/eajene/status/1614342126900285441