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A tree from my childhood. Today I greet you my friends and write to you about nature. This plant that I will refer to today was found while I was visiting a friend's house. The cab took to a blind street and had to back up and make a turn in a wider part of this street and as it was doing so I was able to observe the fruits of the plant. Suddenly my mind went back to my childhood and I could identify this fruit, I recognized its name immediately, *Cautaro*. I was able to find out its characteristics and specifications in several readings I did, but what interested me the most was to find out what the plant meant in my childhood.

I never had the curiosity to eat this ripe fruit. My mother, in my childhood, used to send my brother and I to the foot of a mountain near our home, I don't remember the plant as such, but I do remember the fruit. The plant is a tall tree and its leafy branches were loaded with these small white flowers in several bunches that I would pick and place in a vase with water. But it wasn't the flower that my mother sent us for, it was the fruit. When the flower developed and the white, almost transparent fruits came out they were the reason for her to tell us to go there. The fruits are soft to the touch, I never tasted them but I read that they are sweet, some call them white grapes and when you break their thin layer a fluid comes out of their pulp that is sticky, this was our precious glue, used for school work. Being our family one with a humble condition there were not many things that my parents could buy us for school and among those things was glue. So I would often go to the mountain with my younger brother and we would pick the fruits and bring them to our house. When we squeezed the fruit with our fingers the sticky juice would come out of the fruit and we would proceed to put it on the back of our clippings to glue in our notebook or blog, depending on the task assigned at school. I remember using this type of glue for many years.

It was also used by the children in my neighborhood to glue the kites or *papagayo* that are a typical toy in my country. It consists of thin twigs crossed and shaped like a star, covered with a very thin paper and glued with this viscous glue. At one end of the star a tail made out of paper was placed and at the other end a very resistant thread was fixed. It took advantage of the strong breeze and flew in favor of this, which took it very high in the sky resembling a comet with its long tail. In making inquiries I found that its scientific name is *Cordia Alba* and its common names are *Cautaro* or *Caujaro*.  The Cau taro tree can measure up to 10 meters high, with abundant leafy branches. Its fruits measure from 1 cm to 1 ½ cm, they are oval in shape and its pulp is viscous.

It’s not a tree that is found in many countries. According to what I could read it is found in Panama, Mexico, Nicaragua, The Antilles, Colombia, El Salvador and of course my country, Venezuela. It brought back very pleasant memories for me when I saw this little plant. The cab driver was very kind to me and stopped when I asked him to in order to take some pictures so I could come back to tell you this story. Are you able to remember a tree that brings back fond memories of your childhood? Do any of you, my dear readers, have this tree in your country? Does anyone know it by any other name?

I hope you like it. Apart from these photos of the Cautaro tree with its flowers and fruits I was able to take some other photos of the coast of my city from the highest floor of the building where my friend lives. I went to visit her when I found this beautiful tree.

This is a part of the coast of the Caribbean Sea which forms some of the beaches that reach my city. All photographs are my own taken with my Redmi note 9 phone.

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