Vallée de Mai
| Vallée de Mai Nature Reserve | |
|---|---|
| Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List | |
 |
|
| Location | Seychelles |
| Type | Natural |
| Criteria | vii, viii, ix, x |
| Reference | 261 |
| UNESCO region | Africa |
| Inscription history | |
| Inscription | 1983 (7th Session) |
Vallée de Mai Nature Reserve ("May Valley") is a nature park and UNESCO World Heritage Site on the island of Praslin, Seychelles. It consists of a well-preserved palm forest, flagship species made up of the island endemic coco de mer, as well as five other endemic palms. The coco de mer (Lodoicea maldivica), a monocot tree in the Arecaceae (palm family), has the largest seeds (double nut seed) of any plant in the world. Also unique to the park is its wildlife, including birds such as the rare Seychelles black parrot, mammals, crustaceans, snails, and reptiles. There has been a determined effort to eliminate all the introduced exotic species of plants from the area but this has not been successful in eliminating coffee, pineapple, and ornamental palms thus far. This forest, with its primitive plant and animal species, is a relict from the time when the supercontinent of Gondwana was divided into smaller parts, leaving the Seychelles islands between the present day Madagascar and India.
The reserve is in the middle of the Praslin Island which is the second largest island in Seychelles, where the highest mountain, Fond Azore, rises to a height of 373 metres (1,224 ft). Praslin is 37 square kilometres (14 sq mi) in area 11–5.5 kilometres (6.8–3.4 mi). It is located to northeast of Mahe, about 45 kilometres (28 mi) away It is the lower region of a valley near the head of a stream. It covers an area of a 19.5 ha and is in a virgin state, and is traced to the prehistoric times. The geological formation is of granite as is the entire island; called as a "microcontinent", its evolution is not of volcanic or coraline origin as is the other islands in the Indian Ocean.
The British General Charles George Gordon propagated a myth in the 19th century after he visited the island on a military mission in 1881. Based on a Kabbalistic review of the Book of Genesis, he visioned Vallée de Mai as the Garden of Eden. He had said that he had corroborative proof to support this. His theory was that the palm tree was the tree of knowledge representing both good and evil, and that the breadfruit tree introduced into the island, was the tree of life. He even went to the extent of marking the exact location of the Garden of Eden on the island as the ‘'Coco-de-mer” valley. Only in this reserve, apart from the endemic coco de mer (which he considered as the forbidden fruit due to its aphrodisiac quality), five more species are found together. His observation was that the peculiar suggestive shape of its fruits was to have “caused the plague of our forefathers in the Garden of Eden". His observation was contested by another writer H. Watley Estridge who pointed out to Gordon that the 10 centimetres (3.9 in) thick husk of the fruit was impossible to have been bitten through by Eve, to which Gordon had no plausible answer. The endemic black parrot exclusively subsists on these palm tree forest.
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