Lockjaw is a terrifying disease with a terrifying name. Also known as tetanus, it is caused by a toxin that is made by a bacteria. It causes a variety of symptoms, including muscle spasms that can be strong enough to break bones. It can kill, and in the past it killed a lot.

Tetanus was common in tropical areas like the Caribbean. Perhaps the warmth helped tetanus bacteria stay viable when lying dormant in tropical soils. Or maybe people just had more contact with the dirt, working barefoot. Review of historical records from Brazil found that tetanus rates were higher for enslaved persons. This was likely to be true on St. Martin as well. Enslaved persons were doing dangerous jobs and in constant contact with soil.

In a little brown notebook Pierre Beauperthuy’s collection at The Old House, a cure for tetanus is described: “Make the wild tobacco in a strong bath, take out a little of it to make injections, which must be given frequently.” This herbal treatment was combined with some of the popular medicines of the day: “Give the child two grains of calomel immediately, with a grain of antimonial powder.”

This cure reflects another terror of tetanus: it was often a killer of infants. In the 19th century, when this cure was likely written, we did not yet understand germs. There was no vaccine for tetanus, and the umbilical cord was often a site of infection. Today, tetanus in infants is much less common. Most mothers are vaccinated, which gives immunity to newborns.

The handwritten cure for tetanus continues with a variety of other measures. Oil is taken to evacuate the bowels. Camphor, opium and candle grease are mixed together and spread along the spine, from the throat to the temples, and around the wrists. The bath and injections are repeated five or six times a day. “Remember to keep the child sitting in the bath until it appears sick at its stomach, but great care taken that it does not take cold.”

Would any of this have worked? Probably not. Even today there is no cure for tetanus. The toxin created by the tetanus bacteria is one of the deadliest and most powerful toxins in the world. Both then and now, working to ease the symptoms during months of recovery is a big part of treatment. Luckily, today we are much less likely to get tetanus in the first place, as long as we are up to date with our vaccinations.

Have you heard stories of diseases or conditions that were once more common on St. Martin? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or [email protected].

During St. Martin’s agricultural past, people had to understand the land. Much farming knowledge in the Caribbean was passed down from African and Amerindian traditions. These two cultures had experience with tropical crops, and their methods are still used today.

In a little brown notebook Pierre Beauperthuy’s collection at The Old House we find another approach to understanding the land. It is a description of a process of analyzing soil. The method is simple, and could be performed by anyone with just a few items on hand:

The following is a method of analysing soils for ordinary agricultural purposes: Weigh a convenient quantity of earth to be analysed say one thousand grains dried in the open air; dry the same before a fire on paper, so as not to scorch the paper; re-weigh and the difference will be the moisture. Roast the residue, re-weigh, and the difference will be the organic matter. Pour a convenient quantity of muriatic acid on the remainder; when stirred and settled pour it off, and add oxalate of ammonia, the precipitate will be the lime. Mix the remainder with water and stir it well, when a little settled, pour off the turbid mixture and the suspended contents are argillaceous and the deposit siliceous.

By this process, the user can find out the relative amounts of moisture, organic matter, lime, clay and silica in the in a soil sample. These traits can help understand the richness, acidity and drainage of soils. In turn, these factors can help determine which crops may grow best, or how valuable the land is for farming.

While the process for analyzing soil is given in detail, there are no notes about what the results mean. Were St. Martiners making farming decisions based on soil analysis in the 19th century? At the very least, we know they had at least some of the skills to do so.

In the early 1950s, soil analysis was done here using more modern methods. As one could have done with the method in the notebook, organic matter and calcium carbonate were measured. Many other attributes were measured as well, like pH and the levels of nitrogen and phosphate. A report was published in 1955 about soils of St. Martin and the geology beneath them.

Soil studies in the 1800s may have decided which crop enslaved people were forced to cultivate: cotton, sugarcane or tobacco. The 1955 report told how well crops for the dinner plate and grass for livestock were growing in local soils. We could do better soil analysis today, but the need seems less urgent. Frequent droughts and crop-eating invasive animals like monkeys and iguanas are bigger farming challenges than soil quality. Sadly, our most dire need may be to find out how much we have poisoned and polluted St. Martin’s soils.

What is the soil like in your area? What grows best there? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or [email protected].

The little brown book from Pierre Beauperthuy’s collection at The Old House is full of old knowledge. It contains recipes for medicines and techniques for making glue. It was carefully written. The pages were numbered. It contained very important things that had to be remembered. Like how to make rum better.

There are some clues to suggest that this book dates from the early 1800s. This is a time when sugarcane was grown on St. Martin and rum was made from it. The sugarcane industry was not very successful here and it didn’t last very long. But during this brief window, knowing how to improve rum was surely useful.

The first method starts with Balsam of Peru. The instructions call for adding 35 grains—about a third of a teaspoon—for every five gallons of rum. Balsam of Peru is a resin made from the sap of a tree that grows in Central and South America. It was used as a flavoring, a fragrance and a medicine. Many people have an allergic reaction to it, so it is not widely used today.

The Balsam of Peru was added after being dissolved or pulverized, and left in the rum for eight days. The next step was to construct a filter with a hoop, a flannel bag and charcoal. Impurities are removed by passing the rum through the charcoal. This is a process that is still done today to many spirits. The instructions specify that the charcoal should be made from White Oak.

Directly below these instructions, a second process is recorded under the simple heading “Another.” This method starts with 30 Tonka Beans, well-pulverized. Tonka Beans com from another South American tree, and they were also used as both a flavoring and a fragrance. The bean powder is to be added to a demijohn of rum taken from a puncheon cask and left in the sun for a day before being shaken and dumped back in the cask. A puncheon is a size of cask, about 85 gallons.

The next step is to take some gunpowder tea and a half stick of finely chipped licorice and steep them in boiling water, closed for “24 hours or even a day.” This is then strained into the cask as well. The final touch is some burnt sugar to add color to the rum. Although the burnt sugar—or caramel— tastes bitter, only a tiny bit is used to color rum and it is still used today.

Could we try using these instructions to re-create the flavor of rum that was made in St. Martin 200 years ago? Perhaps, but maybe we don’t need to. Many of these steps are still used in rum making today. Do you have a secret for improving rum? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or [email protected].

A little brown book from Pierre Beauperthuy’s collection at The Old House is full of handwritten recipes for cures. Various entries indicate it is from St. Martin in the 1800s, although we don’t yet know exactly when it is from, or who wrote it. Entries in different handwritings, using both English and French, show that it may have been used for quite a while.

Many of the pages contain recipes for medicines. Between those, the book also has other useful information. There are instructions about how to make essential oil from flowers, and how to test soil. Each page is a reminder of a time when this knowledge was precious. It was a time when people needed a huge variety of skills were needed to survive.

One recipe is titled: “For mending coppers or any other broken vessel.” In the Caribbean, a copper or boiling copper is the giant round vat where sugarcane juice is boiled down. They were also heavy and surely very expensive. They were a key part of sugar processing. After the decline of sugarcane, they were often still used to hold water. On Tintamarre they were placed around a well as troughs for livestock to drink from.

The recipe for mending giant metal cauldrons seems a bit odd at first. It requires boiling half a pint of milk, adding a bit of vinegar to make the milk curdle and then adding a well beaten egg-white. Next, one must sprinkle in a little “very fine boiling lime” and “take care not to let it be too dry when employed to mend anything and it will last very long.”

Though it may seem strange, this basic recipe appears in books as curd cement. It is claimed to be waterproof and long-lasting, but does not seem to be something that would stand up to high heat. Perhaps by the time this recipe was recorded, the coppers were already being reused for things other than boiling cane juice.

It’s hard to say what seems more strange today: a recipe for superglue made mostly from food items, or the idea of mending a vessel at all. But back when this was written, the recipe for a glue was as valuable as the recipe for a medicine. In fact, the very next item in the book is a recipe for “another cement” based on isinglass, a kind of gelatin made from fish swim bladders!

Can you remember a bit of local wisdom passed down from elder generations? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or [email protected].

The little brown notebook is warped with water damage. It’s small enough to fit into a coat pocket and about 100 pages thick. Inside is local medical knowledge from a long time ago. It is all carefully written in script that is mostly still legible today.

On the inside front cover is a quick primer on the apothecaries’ system of measurement: 20 grains in a scruple, three scruples in a dram, eight drams in an ounce. This is handy because most of the recipes for cures are given in grains.

The one of the first medicines in the book is “for a swelling from cold.” It contains 30 grains of calomel, a chemical containing mercury, and 40 grains of jalap, a medicine made from the powdered root of a type of morning glory vine. Both were fairly popular drugs in the 19th century, and neither are in common use today. These drugs were to be “made in 24 pills for a person 14 to 16 years, three pills given every morning.”

Many of the medicines noted in the book are oddly specific, like a dosage specifically for people 14-16 years old. In fact, the very next cure is for “the dry belly ache such as the woman Judy had.” Many of the early cures are attributed to a Dr. Allaway. Many combine chemicals with plant remedies.

What is this odd book? Who wrote it? When is it from? The book contains a list of medicines sent to Mr. Lucas Percival, who lived on St. Martin from 1809 to 1877. This would date it to perhaps the mid-1800s on St. Martin. Later in the book, though, the handwriting changes and the language switches from English to French. Perhaps it is the work of multiple people recording cures over a longer period of time.

The cures themselves are mostly not things one would recommend today. Many include things we now known are poisons, like mercury and lead. But it is a unique window into life on the island in the past. This little book tells us what ills bedeviled residents at that time. And it tells us that doctors had little to offer that would help. Back then medicines were mixed at home from ingredients ordered from New York, and it was wise to write down medical recipes in case a doctor wasn’t around for the next obstinate fever or case of jaundice.

Every single page of this book may have something unique to tell us about the history of St. Martin and how life was lived here. We will continue to explore its pages. Have you ever seen a book like this? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or [email protected].

Why is it so dry right now on St. Martin? The answer is pretty pretty complex, and a bit scary, too.

For starters, spring is the dry season. This time of year, the island is usually as dry as it gets. That’s why people go camping on Easter and why you should never schedule an outdoor event in November. Usually, November is the wettest month and things get drier until April. Starting in May, rain gradually increases through the fall.

But it also seems drier than usual, and it is. St. Martin was rated “severely dry” for the first part of 2019 and the forecast for the coming months is drier than usual. It isn’t necessarily unusual to have a dry year, this often comes in phases with bigger weather cycles like El Niño and La Niña.

Today’s dry weather isn’t just about rainfall. Higher temperatures are also making a difference. Higher temperatures increase evaporation, from the ground and from plants. Many plants adapted to the local climate lose their leaves to conserve water in dry times. Plants less suited to the climate may just die. Either way, St. Martin looks quite brown and barren.

There are reasons to believe that things are getting drier around here. New studies found that the Caribbean drought of 2013-2016 was the worst on record. Climate models also predict less rainfall in the northeast Caribbean in the future.

Things could be worse. Although they are still used, the island no longer depends on cisterns and wells for water. Agriculture is also a tiny part of the economy now. This is in part because so many livestock died in the droughts of 1974-77 and 1986-87. With a tourism economy and a desalination plant, drought may be an eyesore and a fire risk, but it isn’t a threat to survival.

At least, not completely. For wildlife and native vegetation, a shift to a drier climate may become deadly. Especially when wild spaces are already pushed to the limit. A dry future may also spell doom for cultural traditions connected to plants and livestock.

Do you remember a drought from back in the day and how St. Martiners dealt with it? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

The combination of rice and peas or beans is loved all over the Caribbean and has many variations. What are the roots of rice and peas on St. Martin, and why is this dish so popular?

In St. Martin and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean, the Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan) is typically used in this dish. It was brought to the Caribbean from Africa, and grows well in our climate. It can survive the dry season and produces lots of food with little care. They are still grown in backyards all over the island.

Rice also has a long history in the Caribbean. African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) was domesticated in Africa and was brought to the Caribbean by enslaved Africans. But it was not widely grown on St. Martin or nearby small islands. Here, available land and labor were focused on sugarcane, and rice was imported from Africa. Rice was one of few dry provisions able to survive the trip across the Atlantic.

During the 20th century, rice consumption in the region tripled. Perhaps this is because fewer people grew traditional ground provisions like cassava and sweet potatoes. Immigration to St. Martin brought new recipes featuring red beans, black beans and black eyed peas. Yet on this multicultural island, rice and peas is a traditional recipe that still satisfies.

What’s your recipe for rice and peas? What other dishes are most important to the culinary cultural heritage of St. Martin? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Traditional Caribbean houses were designed to stay cool in the tropical heat. There was no air conditioning, so builders used wind, shade and stone to make houses cool. The location of a home, the direction it faced and what was built around it could all make a difference. There were also many design elements that kept houses cool and you can see them right here.

The Old House was built with a massive stone foundation, this keeps the floor dry and protected in storms or floods. It also keeps the house cool. The foundation acts as a thermal mass, absorbing the heat from the house.

High ceilings give hot air space to rise, leaving it cooler below. Openings between rooms allow air to flow all around the house in any direction. The kitchen was not part of the house, so the heat from cooking fires was not near the living space.

The Old House is designed with windows and doors across from each other, so wind can blow through the house. This design can have ten times the air flow compared to a window on only one side. The windows are at human height so people can enjoy the cooling breeze.

Windows were made with louvers—slats of wood that can be tilted. These allowed air to pass, while still providing shade. Residents could change the angle of the louvers to direct the incoming breeze where they wanted it.

Many of these heat beating strategies were developed over time, right here in the Caribbean. Today we see these features as part of the unique style of Caribbean architecture. But many of these design decisions were made for very specific reasons.

Over time, we have developed new building materials and techniques. We also have electric fans and air conditioning. But relearning some old school Caribbean design tricks can still help us today. Modern designers are looking at how we can use these methods to keep homes comfy while using less energy. Perhaps the Caribbean home of the future will start to look a bit like the homes of the past.

What parts of your home design help keep it cool? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

The idea of being eco-friendly is spreading on St. Martin. We can see images from around the world of birds, sea turtles, and even whales that died after eating plastics. We find litter on our own beaches, and the eternal fire of the Philipsburg dump is a constant reminder that we are making more waste than we can handle.

Progress seems slow at times. Recycling on a small island is a little harder, because those materials usually have to go somewhere else to be recycled. It also takes time to build awareness. Promotion of recycling and other eco practices took decades to become established in Europe and North America.

On the other hand, St. Martin has a deep history of reusing and recycling. In fact, it stretches all the way back to prehistory. Visit an archaeological site and you can see the evidence. Conch shells were made into a variety of tools: axes, scrapers, awls and more. This may be first example of reusing a “single-use food container” on St. Martin.

During the colonial era, St. Martin was a remote outpost. Goods arrived slowly by boat and nothing went to waste. Metalwork was done by hand-powered forge so St. Martiners could make their own nails and horseshoes. Old or broken items could be melted down to make new things.

In the early 20th century, there were few jobs on the island. Some St. Martiners living today remember wearing dresses made from cloth flour sacks. In an interview, Delphine David explained that her mother “used to take the flour bag, wash it good, put it in the sun and let the sun draw out the marks…she would take that bag and measure us and crochet right around, tie our waist with a string and that would be our outfit.”

There was recycling in the kitchen, with graters made by hammering holes in a tin can. On the docks even today you can see fish scalers made from bottle caps nailed into a wooden handle. Perhaps the most elegant examples of Caribbean recycling is the steel pan drum. It transforms waste into art.

Waste on St. Martin is a modern problem, and will require many solutions. We need to generate less trash and adopt alternatives to plastic. We need to process our waste better. In some ways these are new skills and habits. Some of the ideas and expertise may come from outside. But when it comes to reusing and recycling, there are deep traditions on St. Martin that we can tap into. This creativity and ingenuity is a part of local culture we can all celebrate and embrace.

What is your favorite historical or recent example of reusing or recycling on St. Martin? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Skinks are small, shiny lizards. With their sleek bodies and small legs they look like they want to be snakes, and maybe could be in a million years or so. For most of history, the skinks of the eastern Caribbean were all lumped into one species.

Herpetologists—scientists who study reptiles and amphibians—knew that these skinks were probably different from island to island. Even in 1862, the famous scientist E.D. Cope mentioned that American skinks were “in a state of some confusion.” But it took 150 years for someone to take a closer look. In 2012, a groundbreaking paper by Blair Hedges and Caitlin Conn described 24 new skink species from Caribbean islands.

The St. Martin Skink, Spondylurus martinae, was one of these new species. It was described from museum specimens, including ones collected by Dr. Hendrik van Rijgersma in the 1860s. Sadly, it had not been seen for a long time. The mongoose in was introduced 1888 and may have eaten them to extinction.

A few years ago, skinks were seen on Tintamarre, living in the stone walls left over from D.C. van Romondt’s farming days there in the early 20th century. Were they St. Martin Skinks? Could they be the last survivors of a species that was wiped out on St. Martin?

In fact, further research revealed that they were actually a very similar species, the Anguilla Bank Skink, Spondylurus powelli. This is the species that also lives on Anguilla and St. Barts. This wasn’t a complete surprise. Tintamarre is closest to St. Martin, but the ground lizards there are the variety found on Anguilla and St. Barts, not the variety on St. Martin.

Discoveries like this show that the evolutionary history on St. Martin is very complicated. We share many species with Anguilla and St. Barts because our islands were connected during the last ice age. Yet there are also species found only on St. Martin. Finding out why could tell us more about how evolution works in general.

And what about our St. Martin Skinks? It seems that the last specimen was collected in Little Bay around 1963. Perhaps they have died out since then. Perhaps, like on Tintamarre, a few have survived unseen. Keep your eyes open for them!

Have you ever seen a skink on St. Martin? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Learn more about the skinks of Tintamarre at Caribbean Herpetology.

Here we are, in the age of the internet. The world’s knowledge is just a click away, in theory. But where are the stories of St. Martiners?

St. Martin is a people as much as it is a place. This island was home to people who created and preserved its culture, who helped their community every day and built the foundations of what is here today. These people were known and loved by all.

Many great St. Martiners live on in the memories of friends and family. They are remembered in the stories that are told about them. But how long will those stories survive?

Thankfully, the lives and achievements of some St. Martiners have been recorded in books and newspaper articles. But this information is not necessarily easy for all to access. When St. Martin students go online to research the history of their home, will they find cultural icons from the past? Will they learn their stories? Will they see their faces?

There are many people to celebrate: Juliette Mingau, Gaston Boasman, Laurelle “Yaya” Richards, Calypso Barbara, Cees van Dolderen, Yvette Hyman, José Lake, Sr, Inez Eliza Baly-Lewis, Cynric Griffith, Melford Hazel, Roland Bryson, Emilio Wilson, Neville Chester York and the list goes on. Some of these names may be familiar to most. Others may be icons in just part of the island. But few have a proper biography that records their life and works.

St. Martin is proud of its people. There are statues of St. Martiners all over the island. Streets and buildings are named after St. Martiners. But far too often, the stories of these people are out of reach. As time moves on, their stories are vanishing bit by bit from local memory. As photo albums are lost or destroyed, their faces disappear, too.

Do you know the story of a great St. Martiner? Do you have photos of local icons who have passed? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

The calabash tree has many uses, and is much loved in the Caribbean. We see them near homes in grainy old black and white photos. You can spot them on the roadside today, a tangle of green branches like leaf-covered whips.

The fruit of the calabash has a hard skin that makes a sturdy and lightweight bowl or cup when it is dried. They were also used as vessels to carry water. Throw some hard seeds inside and you can make them into musical shakers. Designs carved into the wet skin of a fresh fruit are preserved in the dried shell, and many calabash objects feature intricate designs.

The pulp of the fruit is not particularly appetizing, but in some places foods or drinks are made with very young fruit, pulp or seeds. In Curacao, the seeds are used to make a candy called carabobo. Preparations of the fruit are also used as remedies for cough, asthma and other conditions.

Although the calabash tree is not very tall or straight, the hard wood was used for tool handles, saddles and some furniture. In times of drought, calabash branches were cut down so livestock could eat the leaves.

The calabash tree is also a part of many cultures. In one folk tale, the trickster Anancy gathers all the common sense in the world into a calabash. (Spoiler alert: the calabash falls and the common sense scatters, which is why we all have a little of it today.) Some believe calabash trees shelter spirits, and in some parts of the Caribbean they were planted near graves.

Some of the uses and cultural connections to the Caribbean calabash tree can be traced back to the calabash vine or bottle gourd in Africa. Although the tree and the vine are not related to each other, their fruits are used in many of the same ways. African traditions—transformed and adapted to the New World—are central part of Caribbean culture. The calabash tree is a great example of how these traditions adapt and persevere.

How do you use the calabash tree? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Every slogan tells a story of sorts. The story is always incomplete—a phrase can’t sum up an island—but it has some meaning. Slogans tell us something about how we understand St. Martin, how we misunderstand it, how it is and how we want it to be.

The Friendly Island has been an enduring slogan for St. Martin, but it is far from the only one. In some ways, the English translation of Amerindian Soualiga sounds like a slogan: The Land of Salt. But it is probably not one that would bring tourists running.

A 1970 postmark from Philipsburg proclaims this The Beach Island of the Caribbean. Although almost all Caribbean islands have beaches, St. Martin is blessed with many beautiful beaches for its size. The white sand is also a contrast to some of the more recent volcanic islands to the south.

A graphic in a 1981 issue of The Clarion stated We’re glad!—not mad—We are living in St. Maarten. In some ways the phrasing suggests that perhaps we are mad, but we are doing our best to hide it. Perhaps this highlights a difference between the perspective of residents and the ideal projected towards tourists.

Some older slogans emphasized the colonial heritage of the island. Twice the Vacation, Twice the Fun and Two for the Price of One both suggest the dual-identity of the island. It’s Dutch, it’s French, it’s Caribbean is more explicit. Even when the island’s Caribbean identity is acknowledged, it is almost as an afterthought.

The Friendly Island may be a bit vague. Almost any island could brand itself as friendly. Many other islands have developed more specific identities: Unspoiled Queen, Historical Gem, Spice Island and Nature Island. St. Martin really couldn’t claim any of these titles.

On the other hand, The Friendly Island does speak to the open and cosmopolitan nature of St. Martin. It is a place where people from countless cultures live together. It is a place that invited the world to visit.

Aside from the island’s touristic identity, other slogans tell us something about the island. Semper pro Grediens—always progressing—is the motto of Sint Maarten. It is accurate, in that the country is always in motion. Some may disagree about which progress is good or bad. On the masthead of the Windward Islands Opinion from 1959, we see the message LABOUR CONQUERS ALL THINGS. This may be a prophecy that is yet to be fulfilled, but around the world, voices that share this sentiment are louder than they have been in decades.

What is your favorite St. Martin slogan? What does it mean to you? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

In St. Martin, you can find animals that live nowhere else in the world. It’s one of the things that makes St. Martin special and it is a great reason to protect local nature. If these animals disappear here, they will be gone from the planet.

The Spotted Woodslave is one of these animals. It is a kind of gecko, but probably not the one you see most often. This gecko can be huge and it mostly lives on big trees like old tamarinds and mangoes. True to its name, it is light with black spots.

The Spotted Woodslave has only been a species since 2011. Before then, it was thought to be the Turnip-tailed Gecko, a similar species that is found in most of the Caribbean and beyond. The main difference between the two is that the Spotted Woodslave has spots. On average, there are also differences in the number of scales around the mouth and on the toes of the two species.

It may seem surprising that a new species can be “discovered” these days, but it isn’t rare in the Caribbean. Small islands like St. Martin haven’t been studied as much as many places. Many “new” species are known, but not yet named. People on St. Martin have known about the Spotted Woodslave for generations. Scientists have thought for years that the Turnip-tailed Geckos on different islands might be different species. It just took time for someone to do the research and record the differences.

There are many new species being described in the Caribbean today. In addition to comparing the physical characteristics of specimens, we can also compare the genetics of animals from island to island. In the coming years, we will probably find other new species that have been hiding in plain sight this whole time.

But how did our woodslave get its spots? That’s a tough question. The Turnip-tailed Gecko lives on many islands, but St. Martin is the only place where it evolved spots. The authors who described the new species did not have any suggestions. If spots help it hide from predators or sneak up on prey, why didn’t geckos evolve spots on other nearby islands?

Do you know any stories about St. Martin’s geckos? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

The kitchen garden is a Caribbean tradition. As the name implies, they are usually right next to the home. Gardens or farms a bit further from home are often called provision grounds. Kitchen gardens are often small, but they can include a wild variety of different plants.

St. Martin is densely populated, so some kitchen gardens are as small as a few potted herbs on a balcony. Walk down a street and you can see bits and pieces of kitchen gardens all over. Sugar apple, soursop and papaya trees stand guard in front yards. A maiden apple vine winds its way around a front porch. A line of pigeon pea bushes runs along a fence. Bananas are growing in the wettest corner of a yard and a single clump of sugarcane rises up beside a wall. Along the even busiest streets you’re likely to spot doliprane and vervain.

Kitchen gardens are ancient. Plants and techniques come from African and Amerindian traditions that are thousands of years old. European and Asian plants have been incorporated, too. The result can be chaotic, but the diversity of plants makes kitchen gardens rich and strong. Pigeon peas and beans provide nitrogen to their neighbors, papayas and bananas offer shade.

Kitchen gardens have roots in the colonial era, when enslaved persons would tend their own gardens before and after long days of labor. They were key to survival for free St. Martiners during the long years when the island had little economic activity. Today, with a tourism economy and endless imports, the kitchen garden is not as necessary as it once was.

Will the kitchen garden disappear from St. Martin? It seems unlikely. No matter how busy we get, the promise of a fresh-picked sugar apple and the smell of herbs are still irresistible. The growing power of the Caribbean sun is too strong to waste. Time spent with hands in soil will always be one of the best ways to get a moment of zen in a world that is too busy.

What is in your perfect kitchen garden? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Life on an island is special. For million of years being a St. Martiner was an exclusive club. It was a place for the animals and plants that somehow made the journey here. It was a home for the ones who survived storm and drought.

This changed when the first Amerindian people set foot on St. Martin’s shore. People could choose where they went and what they brought. Into the elite club of native species, they brought useful plants and animals. Hitchhikers caught a ride on Amerindian canoes as well.

The pace of new introductions has only gotten faster over time. Rats arrived on European ships. Mongoose were brought from India to Jamaica and from Jamaica to St. Martin. Frogs and lizards have hopped down from Miami.

Today, new species mostly arrive with cargo, especially plants. Dozens of different insect species can arrive in a single container of plants. During the recovery process, an increase in cargo tends to boost the number of new species introduced.

Many remember the appearance of the Giant African Land Snail soon after Hurricane Luis. The colorful Spotted Oleander Caterpillar Moth may have also arrived after Luis. Surely many less noticeable species could have come during this period.

In many cases, these species would have arrived anyway. The Giant African Land Snail has been invading new areas steadily with or without the help of hurricanes. The Spotted Oleander Caterpillar Moth is native to the region, but may have been rare or absent from the island before Luis. The popularity of Oleander bushes would seem to guarantee its eventual arrival here.

It is usually impossible to pinpoint the arrival of a new species. Most arrive unnoticed. It can take years before populations get large enough to draw attention. However, many St. Martiners know their native plants and animals and are quick to notice new arrivals.

Observations by regular people have documented many species that arrived before Irma. These include the Colombian Four-eyed Frog, Mourning Gecko and Greenhouse Frog. Knowing what was here already can help us understand the impact of Irma on local wildlife. Did the hurricane help spread introduced species that were already here? Did it slow down their colonization? It also gives us a better idea which new species may have arrived as a result of Irma and the rebuilding process.

Have you seen any new plants or animals on St. Martin lately? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Could people be forced to leave St. Martin due to rising sea levels and worsening storms? As islanders, climate it is a real threat. Think of all the low-lying areas that could be submerged: Simpson Bay, Sandy Ground, Philipsburg, Grand Case, Orient Bay and many more. But if humans do lose our ability to live on St. Martin due to rising seas, we won’t be the first to suffer that fate.

St. Martin’s relationship with the sea has changed over millions of years. For a time, the island was totally underwater. The coral reefs that grew then became the limestone of the Lowlands and Billy Folly.

There were also times when the sea was much lower. During ice ages, water is locked in glaciers, and the sea level drops. And when the sea level drops, St. Martin gets big. If the sea drops 100 meters, St. Martin is about the size of Trinidad. It connects to Anguilla and St. Barts and well beyond.

Prehistoric super St. Martin was huge—big enough to support rodents of unusual size. The Blunt-toothed Giant Hutia is one of the most astounding St. Martiners of all time. We only know it from fossils, but those fossils suggest it could have weighed over 200 kilograms. This makes it one of the largest rodents of all time.

Giants often evolve on islands, like the giant tortoises in the Galapagos. St. Martin’s giant hutia probably arrived on the island as a much smaller hutia. On St. Martin, it didn’t have predators to hide from, so it didn’t have to stay small. There also weren’t any big grazing animals to compete with, so the hutia could get big and eat all the leaves.

Hutia fossils from St. Martin, Anguilla and St. Barts actually show a surprising range in sizes. Some scientists believe it may have changed size depending on the sea level. When the sea level was lowest and the island the biggest it was at its biggest, 200 kilos. During periods when the island was smaller, it may have shrunk down to 50 kilos.

One estimate shows that this might be possible over 80 generations. On a shrinking island, the smallest of each generation survive and the hutia adapts to fit the space it has. But this process takes time. If the sea rises faster than it can change size, the hutia would be too big to survive in the space available.

We don’t know for sure what happened to St. Martin’s giant hutia, but we can guess. A bit more than 10,000 years ago, the island went from Trinidad-sized super St. Martin to three islands each less than 2% that size. If it couldn’t shrink fast enough, it wouldn’t have enough land to survive. Rising seas would have inundated it to extinction. That sad fate is implied by the giant hutia’s scientific name: Amblyrhiza inundata.

It is amazing to imagine giant hutias roaming St. Martin, like capybaras the size of black bears. It is perhaps just as amazing to imagine ice age super St. Martin. Look out to Anguilla or St. Barts and imagine land between and beyond as far as the eye can see.

What do you see when you look out over St. Martin? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

Dr. Hendrik Elingsz van Rijgersma was a Dutch doctor, sent to provide care to the formerly enslaved people on St. Martin. He was also St. Martin’s first naturalist. He arrived in 1863, and died on the island in 1877. He never published a scientific paper, but his field work was key to our understanding of local nature.

Rijgersma collected shells since childhood. While on St. Martin, he collected many things, including shells, birds, reptiles, insects, plants and fossils. Sometimes he traded specimens for scientific tools or shells from other parts of the world. Many of his specimens are still in museum collections in Europe and the United States. He also painted beautiful watercolors of both shells, fish and plants.

Dr. van Rijgersma collected the fossils of the extinct Blunt-toothed Giant Hutia, a huge prehistoric rodent that lived on St Martin and Anguilla. The Leeward Island Racer snake, with the scientific name Alsophis rijgersmaei, was described from specimens he collected, and the species was named after him.

Most recently, a lizard specimen he collected was used to describe the St. Martin Skink in 2012. Shortly after van Rijgersma collected the skink, the mongoose was introduced and wiped out the skinks on St. Martin. His specimens are a unique window into the nature of St. Martin in the 1860s.

Dr. van Rijgersma died in 1877. He was buried in the Dutch Reformed Cemetery, now known as the Cul de Sac Cemetery. An estate inventory after his death listed four pine cases of shells: the empty cases valued at $8 and the shells “not valued.” This appraisal was highly flawed. His contributions to science—though rarely recognized—were priceless.

What other people from St. Martin’s past are almost unknown today? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].

St. Martin has rich traditions of farming and bush medicine. These are important parts of local culture. But the history of Caribbean plant traditions is largely unwritten. How do we tell this story?

The most developed plant traditions in the Caribbean came from Amerindian and African culture. Because written records were primarily European, these plant traditions were mostly undocumented. We will never know who brought certain plants to the Caribbean, or why. But there are many clues to help us fill in the blanks.

The plants themselves can tell us things. In most cases, we know which species are native to Africa. We also know species from Asia that were used in Africa and probably came to the Caribbean from Africa. In some cases, they were used here in the Caribbean by both Africans and Europeans. But many were only used by Africans, so these were probably brought here by Africans.

Caribbean Amerindians were nearly all killed by disease and genocide, but some of their plant traditions survived. Some knowledge was recorded by Europeans looking for plant products to sell to Europe. Amerindians also shared their knowledge with free and enslaved black people, who preserved this knowledge in their traditional medicine.

Other clues can come from plant names and how plants are used. The Caribbean names of many plants from Africa are similar to the names in African languages. Even some local plants have names that may be based on those of their African relatives. Similar usage of related plants in Africa and the Caribbean shows that existing traditions may have been adapted to new plants. 

Other plants have names that come from their Amerindian names. There are also cases where Caribbean plant use is close to how South American Amerindians use plants. This helps us see how some Amerindian plant knowledge survived on islands after the Amerindians who had lived there were gone.

Though there is little written data from past centuries, we can still tap into the oral histories that have preserved these skills for generations. People living today still carry this ancient knowledge. They also have insight about how it has changed in their lifetime. The constant mixing of people and cultures in the region has been making these traditions deeper and richer for centuries. 

Can you share something about St. Martin’s plant traditions? Tell us by writing in to The Daily Herald or to [email protected].