Botany: The Crying Tree

None of the seven acacia trees in the front yard of Sam Morse's home in La Feria, Texas, seem different from any of the others—or from their countless cousins that thrive in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. But to thousands of Mexican-Americans in the area, one of Morse's 30-ft. acacias has suddenly become "God's tree," an object of awe and veneration. That particular acacia lost its anonymity in mid-July when a stream of tea-colored "water" began spewing from a knothole in a limb 25 ft. above the ground. Local Mexican-Americans soon saw...

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