Castor Plant - Cyprus

Ricinus communis -  Native to the Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa, and India, the seeds from the castor plant are used to make castor oil. Being a surculose plant, it is able to grow new plants through basal shoots produced from the roots of the mother plant. This allows new plants to grow further away from the source. The castor plant is a shrub, but can grow to 12 meters. Shrubs differ from trees in one crucial form; shrubs having multiple trunks growing from the ground, trees have one. 

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Occupying a strategic area in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus has been the center of attention for several centuries. The Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, French, and British struggled and fought to control Cyprus. Since 1974, Cyprus has been partitioned; Northern Cyprus is controlled by Turkey and an independent Southern Cyprus retains close ties to Greece. The northern partition of Cyprus is not recognized as a sovereign entity.

Fetau Tree - Samoa

There are more than 500,000 Samoan speakers in the world; it is the most popular Polynesian language. Most native speakers reside on the Samoan Islands, but Australia and New Zealand also have large populations. Samoan was solely a spoken language until being transcribed into the Latin script during the mid 1800’s. 

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Calophyllum inophyllum - The fetau tree is an evergreen found growing along the coastal areas extending from Madagascar to the Pacific islands and from Japan to Australia. Being a hardwood, the trunk of the tree was harvested by Polynesian boatbuilders in fashioning the keel of their canoes. The leaves, bark, latex, and fruit contain various toxins: saponin, hydrocyanic acid, and  jacareubin. The tree sap had been used as a lethal coating for poison arrows. The fruit, if prepared correctly, is edible; it is usually pickled.