We know South Africans love their gardens! This magazine inspires the home enthusiast with practical ideas for maintaining and enhancing their gardens, patios and backyards. New plants and products are mentioned first in The Gardener and there is also a special focus on indigenous gardening in South Africa.
April 2010 Neighbours... By Dr Hugh Glen
The other day my good friend John came into the pub with some photos he’d taken on a recent trip to Mozambique, and set me thinking. And the theme of my thoughts was global warming, climate change and what we as gardeners can do to adapt, particularly in the Durban area, which is warm and humid, and likely to become more so. Some direction was given to the train of thought by a conversation I’d had not long before with Willem Froneman at Lowveld National Botanical Garden in Nelspruit.
Now the most obvious thing to expect from global warming is that the vegetation belts we are accustomed to on the east coast will move away from the equator – southwards for us – so we can expect to see new natural arrivals from Mozambique in our flora. And the pictures John showed me, and the plants Willem showed me, indicate that this statement contains interesting news for keen collectors of attractive plants. John’s trips to Mozambique are connected with a field guide that he and the Mpumalanga Plant Specialist Group are preparing, on the trees of our north-eastern neighbour. From what I have seen, I would rate this book as a must-have for everybody interested in trees, but because of the wealth of beautiful things it will contain, it will necessarily be large and, let’s say, rather more costly than your average paperback novel.
As for the trees concerned, let me stick only to the Coffee family (Rubiaceae) – even so, I can give no more than a taste of the goodies that live next door.
First up is the Crown-fruit Jackal-coffee (TRICALYSIA coriacea), from the slopes of the Chimanimani. This tree-shrub stands about 2.5 m tall, or at least the ones already in Mpumalanga gardens do – in nature it can get to twice that. It has waxy, blue-green opposite leaves and attractive orange-red berries, with the remains of the calyx standing up like a crown on the end. The flowers are pink, unlike the usual white of our ordinary Jackal-coffees. A single plant would be a fine specimen in a shady part of a warm local garden but … bear in mind what we were saying last month about omnivores and new food sources. I know of two gardens that have this plant. In one there is a single individual, and this does not set fruit. The other has two or three in a grove, and they fruit readily. Although the berries cry out to be used as Christmas decorations, they also carry a big sign legible to all birds saying “Eat Me!”, and I’d be wary of planting two too close together, in case the species escapes to where it’s not wanted.
Then there’s a truly amazing picture John showed me, that he took in the far north of Mozambique, near the Rovuma River. This shows what looks for all the world like an Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia) deep in a natural patch of woodland, but it is not even the same family as Angel’s Trumpet. Closer inspection reveals a relative of the Gardenia that we know and love, but with enormous hanging flowers. The flowers of this tree (which is not yet described) are over a hand-span long and white with green stripes. When John has formally published the description of this new species, I Want One! (And because it’s not yet described, we keep everything vague and don’t even think of adding a photo.)
Our third subject for today is the Firebush, HYMENODICTYON floribundum. Like the Crown-fruit Jackal-coffee, it comes from the Chimanimani, Vumba and Inyanga mountains, but this one spreads further west into Zimbabwe. In nature, you’ll find it in cracks on granite dwalas and on rocky outcrops where fire cannot take hold – little wonder then, that it grows well in at least one Mpumalanga garden. It develops eventually into a small to medium-sized tree (to 8 m tall), which sheds its leaves in the dry season. And the leaves are the main garden interest, as the flowers are small and yellow-green, only conspicuous because of the large numbers in a single spike. The leaves however … ah, the leaves come out sticky and reddish. They turn green quickly, and then at the end of the rains they go an amazing fiery red, at least as good as any North American maple. There’s a stunning picture of one at this stage in Meg Coates Palgrave’s Trees of southern Africa, which is sure to have all acquisitive gardeners (isn’t that all of us?) drooling.
