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It must be true because Björk’s written a song about it and she should know. She comes from the place, doesn’t she?
But I’m talking about another island that’s growing on the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Its name – well, I’ll come to that in a minute.
It started as a volcano erupting mysteriously through the waves. The ocean steamed and boiled, clouds of dense vapour formed above it, lava heaved itself into view, red at first then swiftly cooling to black. Inhospitable to all life at present, but soon mosses and lichens will sail across the ocean and form minor colonies where more complex plants can grow, and then insects will blow in, followed by seabirds using it as a fishing and sunbathing platform.
The world’s press acclaimed the island’s arrival in its usual fulsome phrases. Atlantic Spawns Baby! Birth of an Island! followed by a few ill-related facts. The mid-Atlantic Ridge is a gap in the earth’s floor between two gigantic tectonic plates. (Giving their size in football pitch units and weight in elephants, as readers cannot visualise metric measurements). Like dinner plates (another clarification that serves only to confuse). Superheated lava from the planet’s heart oozes upward, forcing the plates ever further apart.
Sometimes the lava surfaces above the water, as in Iceland. So Iceland’s the only country in the world that’s growing bigger. There it sits, smack on the ridge, and gradually the west half is being separated from the east by new volcanic material. Very gradually. 2.5 centimetres per year. Growing fast as my toenails (and even yours).
But in a million years (and that’s nothing compared with the age of the earth, which is computed in billions – though nowhere near as many billions in years as Russian tycoons own in dollars), Iceland will increase by twenty-five kilometres.
So when this new island arrives, the overpopulated countries in the world start to lay claim to it.
First off the mark, Iceland asserts ownership on the grounds that she and it are on the same ridge, give or take many hundred miles of water between them. This claim is ignored by Canada, the States, Europe and so on, but Iceland persists, taking its demand to the United Nations. This washes up at the Decolonization Committee and sinks without trace.
The Canadians are closer to the Ridge than their friends in the USA, but like Iceland, too far north. Their appeal fails too. Perhaps the States had a hand in this? Perish the thought. The Americans know it is their duty to take over the new land to save it from potential colonialism by those insanely possessive Europeans. They press ahead with their claim, sure of success. Doubly sure because the world’s greatest naval power delegates a warship to patrol the waters around the new island. No other country will be permitted to cunningly creep up and make a Giant Step onto it before planting a flag of possession. After all, it isn’t on the Moon, is it?
But what of Brazil? It founds its title to the island on its ownership of the St Peter and St Paul rocks, which extend its territorial rights well into the North Atlantic. These rocks may be on the Ridge, but as Charles Darwin percipiently noted, (even as he was observing the habits of brown boobies and black and brown noddies) they are not volcanic but formed from ocean floor uplift, so unrelated to the new island. (For you bird lovers, noddies are related to terns and boobies are a kind of gannet, given their name by Spanish sailors because they could so easily be captured and eaten.)
At this point someone checking satellite pictures spots a green patch on the cool southerly edge of the new island. Surely plants are not growing here already? Isn’t the land too hot, too unweathered. Merely a mass of clinker.
The Americans send in the Navy SEALs with secret instructions that they are not to plant the US flag at this point in time, although it’s common knowledge that preparations are in hand to claim the island as the fifty-first American State. A SEAL descends from the circling helicopter with caution as the island is still prone to volcanic activity in the north, where it is extending by the hour. He gingerly makes the first human footprint on the island’s rim. It is no longer hot. He kneels down, inspects the plant. It is rooted in a deep crack, he reports. Very spiny. He swears as he licks his bleeding hand. If he’s going to uproot the darn thing he’ll need . . .
There’s a hurried consultation at HQ. No, on no account is he to damage the plant. Can he ID it?
No, he isn’t a gardener, is he?
The President has been informed that if the plant can be identified as an American, say one that’s flown or drifted in as a seed from Florida, then the American claim will be established.
The hunt is on for a botanist willing to be lowered onto the dangerous island. There are plenty crazy botanists who volunteer, but not one with the required taxonomic skills.
Does that matter? asks the President. All we need is someone who says it’s endemic to the States.
The Society of Botanists objects strongly. In recent years funding in training taxonomists has been sadly reduced. Money has gone to more sexy research like plant interactions within the biosphere, problems of biodiversity and invasive non-native plants. Funding is sorely needed in the area of classification. (They hold out their begging bowls politely but firmly). But we are not taking this identification problem lightly. A diligent search among our members has discovered a suitable candidate for the task.
Meanwhile Europe isn’t beaten yet. Remember Columbus? And Pizarro, conqueror of the Incas? And stout but murdering Cortez, he of the eagle eyes, staring silently from his Darien peak at the newly discovered Pacific? (Newly discovered by Europeans, that is. Native Americans knew it well.) Ignoring the furore over the plant, the Europeans set out their demands.
Long ago the Portuguese ruled over Brazil, but during the last century they finally disposed of their once vast empire, except for some scattered islands. Among which, (how fortunately for the desired ownership of the new island), are the Azores. Plumb on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, increasing in size and number over the last eight million years due to seismic activity, one of the so-called Autonomous Regions of Portugal, they surely have the right, even the duty, to requisition this new land.
At the same period the Dutch, that great trading nation, set up forts on the South American coast, but their empire has eroded so far that only a few of the Lesser Antilles islands remain under the control of the Netherlands. Of these, Curaçao is of ancient volcanic origin, but as it is merely part of the Caribbean plate, not the Atlantic one, the claim by the Netherlands fails.
The French colonised parts of the Caribbean coast, and still have a toehold in Guiana, a South American member of the European Union via its French connection. Its islands were once French penal colonies for the likes of Dreyfus and Papillon, and now, because these lie nearer the new island than faraway France, Guiana formally requests ownership.
Finally, but not least among the claimants is Perfidious Albion, Britain so named by the French, Germans, Spanish and Italians at different stages in their histories. Oh yes, the Brits have a special knack for sneaky dealings and in this case they use the good folk of Bermuda, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha to submit their entitlement on Britain’s behalf. Bermuda is rejected on the rather specious grounds that though it had once been on the Ridge, the expansion of the ocean floor means it now lies well to the west of its original birth. Tristan da Cunha, discovered in the sixteenth century by the eponymous Admiral as he sailed from Europe to India and Malaysia’s spice markets, lies so far south its claim is also discounted. As for Ascension Island, it is quietly reminded of the value of its American airbase and it chickens out.
At last the member chosen by of the Society of Botanists is dropping onto the island to study the plant. To his shame he is unable to identify it as an American seedling. Its nearest relations are African, he decides.
Distant countries like China, India, Australia, Japan and the rest of the East sensibly refrain from comment, but watch the shenanigans with much shaking of heads. The Russians fume, but remember their vetoing power in future discussions and keep quiet for the present.
A specialist in African botany is procured. He too is confused. He says it looks like a member of the Didiereaceae.
The what?
A plant family endemic to south and southwest of Madagascar.
Madagascar?
Yes, they’re important components of the incredible desert forests with lethal spines that only lizards and chameleons can dodge. The botanist begins to wax lyrical about the forests and special plants found only in Madagascar, but is brought back to earth by a fellow specialist reminding him that the soils of Madagascar southwest are derived from sedimentary rocks, both sand and limestone. So how does he propose a plant with quite alien requirements is able to grow on this volcanic island?
The African botanist hurrumphs angrily. He knows he is right. He describes the plant – spiny succulent shrub with thick water-storing stems, leaves reduced, alternate, simple . . . and so forth.
As the botanists quarrel, a cognoscente in Madagascar, plant lover from childhood, trained at the capital’s University of Antananarivo, comes quietly forward. A young and muscular man who has wandered the wildernesses of his country, a sailor who has made the dangerous crossing to mainland Africa alone and voyaged across the Indian Ocean by rowing boat with two equally crazy companions. He asks to see the plant. He is importunate. Eventually, after much delay over passports and visas (who needs these to land on an unclaimed isle?), permission is granted by the self-appointed guardians. He looks at the plant in wonder, even in awe. He kneels before it with respect. He pronounces it a Didiera madagascariensis, as found on the sandy soils around Ifaty in the south-west of his country.
Proof, better than any flag, that this new island is part of Madagascar.
After a few years wrangling in the United Nations, the Americans sulkily withdraw their claim. Everyone else is supporting little Madagascar, from the Russians and Chinese to the Chileans and Egyptians, however implausible the scenario might seem. The new island is called Ifaty after the pleasant beach resort of that name, which has both spiny forests and unusual birds. But you will not find long-tailed ground rollers or the subdesert mesite on this island. Nor any vegetation worth mentioning, for the new plant eventually withered and died.
It is said of the Malagasy botanist that in later years he once mentioned an epic journey made round the Cape of Good Hope and through the South Atlantic with some friends. Under the eyes of a hostile warship. But when an interfering journalist picks this up and asks him to elaborate, he shrugs his shoulders and says when one is young one is crazy, and how can he be expected to remember the foolishness of his youth?
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