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For #ThickTrunkTuesday, a second 
on the "Social Life of Trees" (borrowing this from Laura Rival). Today it's the #Iroko Tree, as it is known in West Africa, or #Mvule in Uganda - #MiliciaExcelsa. It is a tree I know well from my PhD fieldwork in Edo State in #Nigeria in the early 2000s, and one that is good for thinking through human-nature relations
#EnvironmentalAnthropology 1/x
2/x #Iroko (Milicia excelsa) grows in tropical African forests but as a light-demander it thrives in openings and on abandoned farmland - it was through centuries of shifting cultivation that Nigeria's forests were rich in Iroko. Here a picture I took one near Iguesogba in #EdoState - a very nice reminder of some wonderful months I spent largely walking round, guided by two different really great "assistants" and now dear friends, learning about the #HistoricalEcology of Edo landscapes
3/x The #Iroko tree is rich in meaning: Edo people believed Azen (witches) had their lairs in Iroko trees, one reason for not venturing into forests alone. There are also many #Yoruba stories about Iroko trees, for example "Olunronbi and the Iroko Tree" #Folktales #Folklore #Mythology #Nigeria
4/x Iroko trees are also planted at shrines and other important locations, where they become sacred trees, and the Iroko is widely known as the #TreeOfLife in Nigeria (another Tree of Life - last week the #Yew, too!) In #TheLionKing, though, where this picture is from, it is (somewhat confusingly!) one of the landmarks on the way to the Tree of Life ... (and looks a bit different too, so might have to check this!)
5/x So it was mostly forbidden to cut Iroko trees. In the #BeninKingdom (now Nigeria's Edo State), only the "Owina ne Igbesamwan", the Oba's woodworkers guild, was allowed to cut Iroko, the 'royal tree'. They carved pestles, mortars and beautiful wooden boxes like this one, currently in the collection of the University of Birmingham. It's one of the many, fascinating objects in the #DigitalBenin collection - really worth a longer exploration! #Wood #Crafts #Carving
6/x If someone does cut down an #Iroko tree, the punishment can be terrible, specially if it is a sacred Iroko trees in a shrine.
This is what happened in 2018 to the people of Iguoma in Edo State (former #BeninKingdom), when the pastor cut down a sacred Iroko tree planted 500 years ago. #ThickTrunkTuesday
7/x But of course #Iroko has, in fact, been logged extensively for many years, since early colonial days - it was promoted energetically by the colonial forest department as a durable hard wood & became one of Nigeria's 5 most popular timber exports.
So this is a good example of how, in practice, you often have a plurality of different ways of relating to trees or animals in one place - the environnmental anthropologist Brian Morris wrote about this kind of #Pluralism, to me really important.
8/x However, many loggers do worry about cutting Iroko, so as a precaution, they often place a young, unopened palm frond btw logs, to avert divine anger and to avoid accidents during transport etc - nice intersection of 'folklore' with political ecology. This is one of my favourite fieldwork pictures - all the more so because it links my previous work on #Forests and #Forestry to what I work on now, the #OilPalm!
9/x But really noone should cut Iroko at all! It is an #oxalogenic species which fixes carbon into the soil (and fertilises), one of the best trees to plant right now for #CarbonCapture. I learned this from an #Eastbourne fellow #ClimateActivist (activist in the loosest sense - people who do things about #ClimateChange) and you can read more here. I am not an expert on this myself, but the Iroko really is one of our #SuperTrees
10/10 Ian Elgie knows about the #Iroko or #Mvule tree as he and the Eastbourne United Nations Association are very involved in the Mvule Tree Planting project in #Uganda. This is an #Offsetting scheme which, of course, many are rightly super sceptical of, but anyway, here the link in case you are interested. Helping to plant #Mvule trees in Uganda probably a good thing?
https://www.unaeastbourne.org/store/p2/Carbon_Offset_Tree_Planting.html