THE SANCTUARY ESTATEgardens
Reading the map Grows wild Planted by people The crossing it made on its own A journey with people, often a guess Drawn to scale. The sketches are illustrations; dotted routes are guesses.
How we know

Across an ocean, with no one’s help.

How do we know no one carried it? Kapoks on both sides of the Atlantic share identical stretches of DNA, too alike to have been parted when the continents split. And kapok pollen in Ghana is at least 13,000 years old, long before any ship crossed between the two shores. All 18 kinds of ceiba grow in the Americas; only this one also grows wild in Africa.

How it crossed is still a puzzle. The trade winds and most currents here flow from Africa toward the Americas, the wrong way. But from June to January one current carries water from the mouth of the Amazon toward Africa, and from May to September unusual westerly winds can blow from Brazil toward northwest Africa. A pod afloat or a seed on the wind: either could have done it, once.

It went around the world, and never left home.

Where the facts come from

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