What is the municipal tree of Saigon? In popular culture, Hanoi is perhaps intricately linked with the paralyzing but often romanticized aroma of hoa sữa, while just over a hundred kilometers to the east, Hải Phòng proudly brandishes the name “the city of red phượng flowers.” Đà Lạt has too many flower varieties to choose just one, and settles for “the city of a thousand flowers.” Down south, Bến Tre’s abundance of coconut trees is famous nationwide. Ask any Saigoneer this question, and you’re likely to get one of two answers: chò nâu (dipterocarp) or me (tamarind).
Chò nâu and me share a propensity to let go of parts of themselves when the wind sweeps by, peppering the streets of Saigon with twirling chò seeds and a carpet of minuscule tamarind leaves. This is the simple joy of Saigon living: to crane your neck up every time a gentle zephyr picks up, to be greeted with a mesmerizing sight often seen in schmaltzy soap operas. While chò nâu’s spinning seeds are undoubtedly more whimsical, I always reserve a special corner of my psyche for tamarind, the seed pods with a sourness that sings of Vietnamese flavors.
Nguyễn Văn Bình, Saigon's first-ever book street, is cool and pleasant thanks to its rows of tamarind trees. Photo by Brian Letwin.
For any armchair botanist fascinated with the local flora of Vietnam, the sooner one makes peace with the fact that a significant amount of the plants you know and love aren’t indigenous to the country, the better. I find it comforting once I realize it’s a sign our climate and soil are so nurturing that new species and cultivars can flourish with aplomb and integrate so well into the local ecosystem — an apt if slightly ham-fisted metaphor for the welcoming nature of Vietnamese culture. Like lêkima, phượng vỹ, and even dragon fruit, tamarind is not native to the country, but it’s been a crucial part of our daily lives for so long that it’s hard to imagine a Vietnam without it.
From Africa to Saigon
Tamarind (Tamarindus indica), known in Vietnam as me, originates from Africa, though there are several theories regarding its exact spawning ground. One points to the drier savannah of the Sudanian region spanning Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger today; while another places me’s root in Eastern Africa in the Nile Valley. There are archaeological proofs showing that Egyptians started cultivating tamarind as early as 400 BCE. Thanks to human dispersal, tamarind is now present in every nation in the tropical belt, and has become particularly significant in the culture of the Indian subcontinent, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Like lêkima, phượng vỹ, and even dragon fruit, tamarind is not native to the country, but it’s been a crucial part of our daily lives for so long that it’s hard to imagine a Vietnam without it.
You can find cây me throughout the topographies of Vietnam, especially in places further south with hotter climates that me evolved to withstand. It’s challenging to determine when tamarind arrived in Vietnam from Africa and who brought the brown, sour pods to bury beneath the monsoon-battered soil of our wilderness, giving them the golden opportunity to thrive with unbridled glee. Tamarind in the wild could have hitch-hiked with Indian traders at southern ports, or alongside Vietnamese repatriates from Réunion Island or other French territories based in the Tropics. Still, if you harbor as much affection for Saigon’s rows of street tamarind trees as I do, know that they were the result of French urban planning.
An illustrated map of Saigon in 1881. The Saigon Zoo, where many exotic trees were first cultivated, is on the right along the river. Image via Fédération Nationale du Patrimoine.
Botanist Eugène Poilane describes tamarind in his article “Les arbres fruitiers d'Indochine” (The Fruit Trees of Indochina, published posthumously in 1965) as a local fruit enjoyed by people of diverse backgrounds: “Many have been planted along the streets of Saigon. Indians buy the fruits, which have laxative properties. The Vietnamese preserve them in sugar, harvesting the fruits just before they reach full maturity. The fruits are peeled but the fruit’s peduncle and the four fibers holding the fruits are kept intact. They are also used to make soups and drinks. The young, tart leaves have a flavor somewhat similar to sorrel and are edible.”
From the nursery to the mean streets of Saigon
Jean-Baptiste Louis-Pierre, a French botanist, was often credited as the father of Saigon's first green spaces. Image via Wikimedia.
Jean-Baptiste Louis-Pierre was born in 1833 on Réunion Island into a rich sugar plantation family, which allowed him to study medicine in Paris and then specialize in botany in Strasbourg. In the 1850s, he took up a post with the British under Sir Dietrich Brandis, the “father of tropical forestry,” in Calcutta, India. His talent for tree-whispering eventually got him the promotion to Head of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens.
Towards the end of the decade, the French took over Saigon, and began planning a city center that would eventually become District 1 today. In 1864, they greenlit the establishment of the Jardin botanique et zoologique de Saïgon on a 12-hectare patch of land by the Bến Nghé Creek to research plant and animal species for economic purposes. The facility exists nowadays as the Saigon Zoo & Botanical Garden. Louis-Pierre was hired in 1865 as the institution’s first-ever director, who used his knowledge of Indian and Indochinese flora to cultivate one of the region’s most prolific plant collections. When it was time to beautify Saigon streets with trees, many of the choices were species collected and grown by the research institute, including tamarind and mango.
In sociologist Trần Hữu Quang’s book Hạ tầng đô thị buổi đầu (Urban Infrastructure in the Early Era), it’s reported that by 1866, many central thoroughfares had been made over with ornamental trees, such as tamarind, mango, and bàng, planted every 5 meters on major streets like Rue Catinat (Đồng Khởi today). The fruit-bearing species were growing so well that their scattered fruits turned into a major nuisance, while their luxuriant canopies were blocking the sun, causing major mold and dampness problems. This prompted the Colonial Council to cut down many to reduce the frequency to 10 meters between trees — how surreal is it to discover a time when Saigon had too many trees?
Me as a reminder of Saigon's downtown charms
It’s very easy to love tamarind trees. The trees never grow to be too towering or too stunted, just enough to provide shade with their layers and layers of perfectly pinnated tiny leaves. The young fruits are an amusing snack for school children, while ripened ones are a truly rare, unctuous treat filled with fudgy, toasty, sweet flesh. And they’re not too heavy to cause head injuries, should errant me pods fall onto your head — can you imagine an alternative history of Saigon when Louis-Pierre selected durians to be ornamental trees?
Me can be eaten raw (me dốt) or processed into a range of different confectioneries, like me ngào chấm bánh tráng đỏ.
Most of Saigon’s oldest educational institutions are based in French-style campuses scattered around the downtown area, which is naturally surrounded by rows of tamarind trees, so generations of students in Saigon — no matter where they live — have spent their formative years under the romance of tamarind canopies. One such student was writer Bình Nguyên Lộc, who was born in Biên Hòa, but studied at Lycée Petrus Ký (now Lê Hồng Phong High School). His time in Saigon has too endeared him to the charms of tamarind trees:
“Oh, the rows of tamarind trees in Chợ Cũ, the tamarind trees of Gia Long Street, the tamarind trees of Tản Đà Street, the trees that accompany pedestrians every noon; the trees that curiously peek into the windows of private residents, sneaking tiny leaves into the hair of little girls; the trees with dark green canopies lingering after the piano melodies of an unknown player pouring out from some windows. [...] The aching for their hometowns of Saigon’s crop of outsiders is abated in parts whenever they look at the changing colors of the rows of tamarind trees on Nguyễn Du and Hồng Thập Tự.”
