Diospyros tessellaria

Diospyros tessellaria (black ebony, bois d'ebene noir or Mauritian ebony) is a species of tree in the family Ebenaceae.

Diospyros tessellaria
Foliage of Mauritian ebony - Monvert Nature Park
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Ericales
Family: Ebenaceae
Genus: Diospyros
Species:
D. tessellaria
Binomial name
Diospyros tessellaria
Poir.

The tree is one of several ebony species endemic to the island of Mauritius in the western Indian Ocean, and was once the most common, widespread ebony species of that island.

Description
Sign at the foot of a young Mauritian ebony at Monvert gardens
Seedlings in cultivation at Ferney

The massive, slow-growing, evergreen tree can reach up to 20 metres (66 ft) in height. Mature trees can have trunks of over a meter in diameter (However, this species is slow growing and was heavily harvested for timber in the past, so the largest specimens still remaining have trunks of only around 50 cm diameter).

The thick leaves have a dark green surface and a slightly paler underside. A distinctive feature is that the leaf margins and veins are mildly translucent, when held up to the light.

They produce small, white, fragrant flowers and fleshy fruits.[2]

History

Like other species of ebony trees, Mauritian ebony trees yield a dark black ebony wood. In its natural habitat, it was a massive canopy tree - common in the dry and upland wet forests of the island.

Exploitation by the Dutch

Vice-Admiral Wybrandt van Warwijck landed on Mauritius on September 17, 1598, thus beginning Dutch involvement with the island. In 1638, settlers from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) attempted to colonize the island and set up an organized ebony business to sell the rare black wood. However, due to issues with cyclones destroying the settlement, rats destroying crops, settlers illegally trading with English ships, and slaves revolting commonly, the Dutch left the island in 1710.[3]

Ebony as a British Import

After the French settled Mauritius in 1721, the British took over the island and Port Louis in 1810. Not only was Mauritius used as a stopping point for ships traveling to British India and other parts of Asia, but now it was also used as a major exporter of goods back to London. While the most popular good from Mauritius was sugar by far, the British did harvest a large portion of the ebony forests. The wood was presumably used for carving and decor in London.

This species is one of eleven surviving species of Ebony tree which naturally occur on Mauritius - all of them endemic.

  • Diospyros tessellaria (Vulnerable) the most famous and widespread species, occurring right across Mauritius.
  • Diospyros angulata Poir. (Extinct, 2000) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros boutoniana (Critically endangered) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros chrysophyllos (Critically endangered) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros egrettarum (Critically endangered) of coastal and dry forests. It has white bark and dark rectangular leaves.
  • Diospyros hemiteles (Critically endangered) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros leucomelas (Vulnerable) of coastal and dry forests.
  • Diospyros melanida (Vulnerable) of the sub-humid to dry forests. It has small, pale leaves and pale grey bark.
  • Diospyros neraudii (Vulnerable) of dry forests.
  • Diospyros nodosa (Critically endangered) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros pterocalyx (Vulnerable) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest.
  • Diospyros revaughanii (Vulnerable) of intermediate sub-humid to upland wet forest. It is a small tree with large, densely packed leaves which attach to the stems without stalks.


gollark: Anyway, going through #12 in order:> `import math, collections, random, gc, hashlib, sys, hashlib, smtplib, importlib, os.path, itertools, hashlib`> `import hashlib`We need some libraries to work with. Hashlib is very important, so to be sure we have hashlib we make sure to keep importing it.> `ℤ = int`> `ℝ = float`> `Row = "__iter__"`Create some aliases for int and float to make it mildly more obfuscated. `Row` is not used directly in anywhere significant.> `lookup = [...]`These are a bunch of hashes used to look up globals/objects. Some of them are not actually used. There is deliberately a comma missing, because of weird python string concattey things.```pythondef aes256(x, X): import hashlib A = bytearray() for Α, Ҙ in zip(x, hashlib.shake_128(X).digest(x.__len__())): A.append(Α ^ Ҙ) import zlib, marshal, hashlib exec(marshal.loads(zlib.decompress(A)))```Obviously, this is not actual AES-256. It is abusing SHAKE-128's variable length digests to implement what is almost certainly an awful stream cipher. The arbitrary-length hash of our key, X, is XORed with the data. Finally, the result of this is decompressed, loaded (as a marshalled function, which is extremely unportable bytecode I believe), and executed. This is only used to load one piece of obfuscated code, which I may explain later.> `class Entry(ℝ):`This is also only used once, in `typing` below. Its `__init__` function implements Rule 110 in a weird and vaguely golfy way involving some sets and bit manipulation. It inherits from float, but I don't think this does much.> `#raise SystemExit(0)`I did this while debugging the rule 110 but I thought it would be fun to leave it in.> `def typing(CONSTANT: __import__("urllib3")):`This is an obfuscated way to look up objects and load our obfuscated code.> `return getattr(Entry, CONSTANT)`I had significant performance problems, so this incorporates a cache. This was cooler™️ than dicts.
gollark: The tiebreaker algorithm is vulnerable to any attack against Boris Johnson's Twitter account.
gollark: I can't actually shut them down, as they run on arbitrary google services.
gollark: Clearly, mgollark is sabotaging me.
gollark: I submitted them but they were all wrong.

References
  1. Page, W. (1998). "Diospyros tessellaria". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 1998: e.T30552A9562531. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.1998.RLTS.T30552A9562531.en.
  2. "Ebony tree in Mauritius". Mauritius Uncovered.
  3. Stanford Department of Anthropology. "History". Mauritian Archaeology.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.