Times of the Islands Fall 2022

B Naqqi Manco, Assistant Director of Research and Development at
the TCI Department of Environment & Coastal Resources, has an informal
voluntary side gig answering residents’ questions about plants
and animals they find in their yards. He also works on mentoring
younger DECR staff to learn the plants. In this case, he is helping
Terrestrial Ecologist Dodley Prosper key out Inagua Encyclia orchid
Encyclia inaguensis.
The “askee” of this informal Q&A is B Naqqi Manco,
a botanist and assistant director of research and development
at the Turks & Caicos Islands Department of
Environment and Coastal Resources. Answering questions
online about native plants, creepy-crawlies, and snakes is
not part of his job, but he gladly responds to the curious
and (sometimes) panicked in the name of sharing
knowledge and quelling fear. “I get questions about two
or three times a week, sometimes more,” he says. “Not
just for the Turks & Caicos. People send them to me from
all over the world. Most of the time I can give them a
family (a category in the scientific classification of plants
and animals), but sometimes I’m just looking at a bunch
of green leaves.”
He notes that he’s on more solid ground when
responding to things found in the Turks & Caicos Islands.
Naqqi is certainly uniquely qualified: He began visiting
TCI when his mother moved to Grand Turk when he was
young; he pursued biological studies at university in the
United States; and he has lived and worked in the Islands
since 2000. His work here has honed his knowledge, and
he continues to be doggedly curious about anything that
pops up in the bush or someone’s yard.
A human app
One reason he readily responds to questions is that he
has seen the limitations of computer apps that purport
to identify plants and animals. “Apps are restricted to a
geographical database and your camera,” he says. Most
of them don’t cover the Turks & Caicos. Then there is the
matter of accuracy. “There are a lot of plants that can only
be identified by dissection,” Naqqi notes. “There’s a plant
here called Stipitate Dog-Strangle. It’s a milkweed vine
that looks exactly like Northrop’s Dog-Strangle. In order
to properly ID it, you have to dissect the flower. An app
can’t tell you that.”
Okay, the average TCI homeowner might not care
which kind of dog-strangle he/she has, but you get the
idea that Naqqi cares more about a true ID than your
average app. Plus, he can recommend how to nurture a
native or kill an invader, and he will plead the case for
harmless but scary critters. “I like the panicky questions,”
he says, “The ‘OMG, WTF is this?’ posts.”
While a person might get a sting, rash, or bite in the
TCI bush, there isn’t anything truly dangerous, so Naqqi
uses these questions as an opportunity to teach people
about the value of our diversity and some environmental
laissez-faire. The only times he becomes annoyed by
questioners is when they have already destroyed something—a
harmless snake, mosquito-eating insect—out of
fear.
Plant blindness
Mostly, though, he’s happy that people are curious and
ask their questions, particularly about plants. It helps,
he says, to combat “plant blindness.” He says, “Our society
is such that plants are a backdrop for most people.”
They don’t notice them until they encounter something
unusual. “I don’t have plant blindness.”
He never did. Naqqi says that when he was a kid, “My
parents tried to get me into normal things, like sports,”
but he was always the odd one, distracted by birds when
Opposite page: These are just a few of the hundreds of plant and
animal images identified by Naqqi on Marta Morton’s Facebook page
in the Album “Plants, Bugs and Assorted Unknowns.”
Left to right from top: Nymphs of giant mesquite bug Sphictyrtus
chryseis; Tomato hornworm Manduca sp.; Cuban treefrog Osteopilus
septentrionalis; Southern Bahamas bark anole Anolis scriptus; Schaus
swallowtail Heraclides aristodemus bjorndali; Mexican monkey fiddle
Euphorbia tithymaloides; Bird cherry Crossopetalum rhacoma; Leaffooted
bug Leptoglossus; Tersa sphinx moth Xylophanes tersa.
DODLEY PROSPER
18 www.timespub.tc