01 A garden in the centre
Roseau’s Botanic Gardens occupy a considerable area right at the foot of Morne Bruce, east of the centre. In a capital of thirty built hectares, it is the only large open space, and it works at once as park, sports ground and botanical collection.
Among its specimens was an African baobab, a species not native here and planted out of curiosity: an enormous trunk, short branches and a silhouette that resembles nothing in Dominica’s forest.
.jpg?width=1200)
02 29 August 1979
Hurricane David crossed Dominica in late August 1979 as one of the most destructive cyclones the island has received. It flattened crops, left a large share of the population without shelter and transformed the country’s vegetation.
In the botanic gardens, the wind toppled the baobab. The tree fell exactly onto a school bus parked beneath it. The vehicle was crushed under the trunk; nobody was inside at the time.
03 The decision not to remove it
What is interesting comes afterwards. With the whole island to rebuild, removing a trunk of those dimensions and a crushed body was not a priority. But years passed and it still was not removed, and at some point it stopped being a pending job and became a decision.
Today the ensemble is part of the garden’s route, with an explanatory sign, and it is the obligatory stop on any visit. It is the hurricane’s memory told without rhetoric: an enormous tree and a bus underneath.
04 The tree that came back
The least-told detail is the best one. The baobab did not die when it fell: from the lateral branches left in contact with the ground, new vertical growth emerged, and the tree carried on growing while lying down, with a new trunk rising from the old one.
That is why what you see today is not a dead trunk over scrap, but a living tree lying horizontally. It is behaviour typical of the species, which resprouts easily, but here it produces an image that is hard to forget.
05 How to see it
The garden is a ten-minute walk from downtown and needs neither guide nor ticket. Allow half an hour: besides the baobab there is a labelled tree collection and a breeding aviary for the sisserou, the island’s endemic parrot.
If you have another half hour, climb Jack’s Walk to the Morne Bruce viewpoint. From up there you see the whole of Roseau, the wharf and the coast, and you grasp the capital’s real scale.
.jpg?width=1200)
.jpg?width=1600)
.jpg?width=1600)
