Kloto / Kpalimé, Togo

2019-07-15: A botany lesson in the "mountains" of Togo.

West of Kpalimé the "mountains" of Togo are a true botanical paradise. The relative altitude offers a certain freshness allowing beautiful walks of initiation to the Togolese flora in very tolerable climatic conditions.
We settled at the Kloto camp at a height of just over 600 m to bivouack for three days.

Gandalf at the Kloto campement

We undertake our botanical hikeIt with Raphael. We opt for a two-hour hike. At 1500 CFA (€ 2.36) per person and per hour.
The weather is ideal. We have only 21°C when we start at 11 o'clock.

Raphael starts by showing us his latest artistic creations. He had the idea of ​​sawing tree trunks victim of strangling figs in pieces of about 2.50 m in length. After patiently removing the remains of the host tree he sanded and varnish the roots of the fig tree. The result is there in front of us: hollow and cylindrical columns that will become beautiful lamps after the installation of a lighting system inside the lace envelope.

Strangling figs as light columns. Rapahel's idea!

 Raphael lives in the village of Kouma Konda just a kilometer from here. He is not only a guide but also an artist. He also regularly gives thematic courses at the Lycée Français of Lomé.

The hike will last 2:30 and will be very informative for us. We will not only get to know new plants and trees, but also learn many more details about those we already know.

For example about teaks that we find regularly on our road from Senegal. Raphaël is going to show us that a very beautiful natural red dye can be obtained by crushing and grinding the young leaves.

Raphael and a teak

The red hand of Raphael

We have the opportunity to find a jackfruit on our way. The first since Doucki in Guinea. Raphael has no new information to give us on this tree whose fruit is extremely rich in protein is very popular by vegans.

Young Jackfruit

We discover for the first time the passion fruits. Did you know it was a creeper-like climbing plant? The one we have in front of us uses a lemon tree as support. The fruits turn orange then red when they are ripe.

Passion fruit on its liana

The fruits of passion grow on climbing plants.

Christine will bring back some passion fruit.

The guava is not new to us although we have not seen very often on our way.

A guava tree.

Raphael shows us a small peanut plantation. We had already seen some in Senegal. It was then big bushes whereas here the plants are very small. Some are in bloom, small yellow flowers that mean the peanut is forming underground.

Peanut plantation

Peanut flowers

We have of course already seen a lot of banana trees since we are in tropical Africa but Raphael will give us interesting information about this plant which, I remind you, is not a tree but a grass, in spite of its appearance. Banana trees produce two types of flowers in the big purple bud (baba-fig): female flowers that will give birth to bananas and male flowers that appear at the end of bananas. We learn that a sprout will give birth to only one banana cluster, we have to wait a year for that. At the same time, rejections come out of the soil after six months (a reproduction system similar to that of pineapples), which will also give a single banana cluster after one year. It is recommended to cut the mother plant as soon as it has produced its cluster to allow the rejection to develop properly.

Baba-fig and female flowers.

Is this an orange tree or a lemon tree? Well, none of both ! It's a grapefruit explains Raphael.

Grapefruit tree

We do not learn anything new about the calabash tree but Raphael confirms that there are two kinds: one in the form of trees and the other in the form of cucurbits on the ground.

Calabash

Calabash flower

We arrive in the village where we will have the opportunity to observe some artists at work. This small village makes us a good impression, clean, neat and hardworking.
We will discover new plants, like castor. It is a small bushy shrub with large leaves and the fruit of which the famous castor oil is made.

Christine and Raphael in front of a castor bush.

Castor fruit

Castor flower

Here is another plant that we discover: the kinkeliba that our friend from Lomé had already told us about, whose seeds prepared in herbal tea, "the long-life herbal tea", are used to treat digestive and intestinal problems and whose roots would have anti-malaria properties.

Kinkeliba

A little farther up stands a beautiful soursop tree where still hang some fruit with white and luscious flesh that tastes both sweet and tart. Raphael shows us a colony of red ants having woven a canvas around a fruit to lodge there. The queen is in the center.

Soursop

Red ants having taken possession of a soursop.

Jatropha curcas, whose fruits and sap are very toxic, is attracting renewed interest as its fruit oil seems to be able to be used as an agro-fuel.

The toxic fruit of Jatropha.

An idea launched by a Frenchman: painted doors and windows in the village.

At the exit of the village we enter the yard of a small house to take a look at oil palm nuts spread on the floor drying in the sun. Raphael explains that the fruit of the oil palm is used to make two types of oil: the red oil with the fruit pulp and the white oil with the seed after drying the nut (palm kernel oil). The white is of course much more expensive because it requires a lot more work. Waste is a good fuel that blacksmiths regularly buy at the farm.

Palm nut drying.

The inside of the almond will be used to produce palm kernel oil.

Palm nut waste is a good fuel.

 

Raphael and Christine in front of a sandbox tree.

Thorny trunk of the sandbox tree.

The fruit of the sandbox tree ...

The sandbox tree is a majestic tree with a thorny trunk, the monks of Danyi (their monastery is about thirty kilometers further north) use this tree as support for pepper trees. The thorns prevent the plant from slipping off the trunk. The fruit of the sandbox tree has a very special shape, children use the dried fruit to make the wheels of their toys.

... .. serves the children, once dried, to make the wheels of their toys.

We have had many occasions to observe coffee trees. As in Doucki, the most exploited kind here is the robusta. It is a shrub that can reach up to 4 m in height. When the beans are ripe (red) they are picked by sliding the hand around the branch from the base to the end.
They must then dry for a month before being sold to roasting companies. Some producers come together as a cooperative to make their own coffee. Arabica, rarer, is a shrub much more puny. These grains must be harvested one by one, otherwise the flowers can not reproduce the following year.

Raphael in front of a robusta coffee.

Robusta coffee

Coffee flowers.

The plantain! It is by the color of the stem of the plant that we can differentiate banana from plantain. The stalk of the plantain is more red and orange than that of the banana, that is why they are differentiated.

Thierry and plantain

We are now entering the forest, beginning to discover a new tree: the nutmeg. The one we have before our eyes is majestic, we can distinguish some large nuts hanging in the branches.

A nutmeg.

 

We will again be dealing with the oil palm which is called Ebe (perfect tree) by the Ewe, the main ethnic group of Togo. Perfect because it is used for a lot of things. In addition to palm oil and palm wine, its large leaves will be used for roofing houses, the skin of the stem cut into strips will be used to make wicker objects (baskets, hats ...), Stems themselves can be cut in half lengthwise to make racks and with the very strong central part of the small leaves brooms are made, ubiquitous utensils in the villages. A tree to be used for everything!

Ladder of bamboo to climb in the palm trees.

Pineapple flower.

Orchid.

We pass in front of a giant yucca. Raphael explains that this tree is used as demarcation for the cadastre because it is almost indestructible, resistant for example even to bush fires.

We discover a new type of cocoa with red pods. Our guide explains that only the pod differs in color but the seed itself is identical. On the other hand, red produces more pods on the same tree than green.

Raphael shows us another small shrub, the Madagascar Arangana whose bark provides a natural orange dye.

The bark of the Madagasca arangana provides a natural orange dye.

 

The pepper tree is a climbing plant that uses the trunk of other trees as support. The various peppers we know: green pepper, gray pepper, black pepper, white pepper are from the same plant but manufactured at different levels of maturity. White pepper is made from the inside of the grain and requires a lot more work, which explains its price in general much more expensive.

Pepper tree

Pepper

White pepper

We are back at the camper after 2h30 walk.

After the meal and the coffee we make the small excursion to the summit of Mount Kloto.
It's not very far, we reach the summit in about forty minutes. The view is quite clear and the panorama we discover towards the west and Ghana allows us even to guess the sparkling expanse of Lake Volta.

View to Ghana from Mount Kloto, with Lake Volta shimmering on the horizon.

View of Tomegbe at the foot of Mount Kloto.