African Trees

Here is an invitation to experience more of Africa through her trees, for they are a key to knowing this complex continent's landscapes, history and diversity.

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You who would pass by and raise your hand against me, listen before you harm me; I am the heat of your hearth on the cold winter nights, the friendly shade screening you from the summer sun and my fruits are refreshing draughts quenching your thirst as you journey on; I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie and the timber that builds your boat; I am the handle of your hoe and the door of your homestead. The wood of your cradle and the shell of your coffin; I am the gift of God and the friend of man. You who pass me by, listen to my prayer ... harm me not. -Anonymous. Originally translated from Portuguese, and reprinted from Discovering Trees in Nepal and the Himalayas (Sahayogi Press, Kathmandu, Nepal).

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"Only when you transcend the routine expectations of daily living are your senses awakened; in illo tempore"

Africa is a diverse and complex continent, ecologically and culturally. A continent that, perhaps more than any other, instils a powerful sense of place.

For some visiting Africa for the first time, the initial attraction is often spectacular wildlife in a savanna landscape: a tawny lion in long grass or a silent herd of elephants. For others, it is the charisma and cultural diversity of Africa's people: their music, dance, hospitality and ability to laugh in the face of chaos and disaster. But, as time goes by, those making return visits to Africa realize that the allure of the continent is far more complex. The lion, elephant or traditional people that first attracted them now provide a reference point that guides them into the wider African landscape.

With few exceptions, the longest-lived and largest organisms within that landscape are the trees. Very often it is a tree species rather than a mammal that characterises a particular landscape. Whistling thorns Acacia drepanolobium, for example, symbolise the wooded grasslands of the Great Rift Valley, multiple-branched Hyphaene compressa palms the sandy East African coastal plain, and paper-barked Commiphora trees the stony desert hills of Somalia and the Kunene region, Namibia. The smooth, stately bottelboom Pachypodium lealii epitomises the stony desert of northern Namibia and southern Angola; Brachystegia trees typify the miombo woodland on the south-central African escarpment; and the stilt roots of Rhizophora mangroves are immediately recognisable in coastal estuaries of tropical and subtropical Africa. Perhaps most characteristic of all are alpine Africa's 'botanical big game', the giant lobelias and tree senecios which have survived for centuries in East Africa's snow-capped mountains but now face their biggest threat yet: global warming.

Without trees, many animals - mammals, birds, insects - would disappear. No food, no nest sites, no perches, no shelter. For people, a lack of trees would mean great hardship, for they depend on trees for fuel, building material, medicines, food, twine and shade. It is no coincidence that the largely treeless grasslands of southern Africa's highveld were so sparsely settled in the pre-colonial period. So strong is the link between trees and African people's use of them that the word for trees and the word for medicine, imithi (singular umuthi, sometimes spelt umuti), are the same through most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Inevitably, with such a diversity of tree species, botanists keep descriptions of trees to a bare minimum. Botanical shorthand reduces the baobab, for example, to: 'A tree to 18 m with enormously wide trunk, bark smooth, leaves alternate, digitately 3- to 9-foliolate, leaf-lets oblong to ovate, 5 to 15 x 3 to 7 cm, petiole to 12 cm long; flowers waxy white, up to 20 cm diameter. Fruits indehiscent, cylindrical to 35 x 13 cm.'

There is clearly far more to trees than this. What the botanical shorthand can't describe is memories of an individual tree, or parts of it, rather than the species: a lesser galago leaping from a baobab's branches in moonlight; the tart taste of the stunningly white fruits; the strong, stringy bark, stripped for making mats; majestic baobabs in a late afternoon landscape, their smooth skins bathed in golden light; or a particular baobab which formed the shrine for ancestors at a family homestead. So it is with all trees, if we have the luxury of time and the benefit of local knowledge to experience them fully.

That is not to say that botanical descriptions and dichotomous keys to plant identification are not useful. At the very least, those persistent enough to work through identification keys will be rewarded by knowing what tree they are looking at. And botanical names, as cumbersome as they may seem at first, are essential. How else can one navigate through the myriad 'mahogany' trees? Similarly, so many things are called 'bobbejaankos' (baboons aren't that fussy), or 'wild plum', or 'wild grape'. Just as there are several 'stinkwoods' from very different families, so dozens of tree species in East and southern Africa have a local name with the Bantu root-word 'nuka', referring to smell. Namunuka Celtis durandii in Luganda, unukani Ocotea bullata in Zulu, and omunuka, referring to the weedy khakibos Tagetes minuta, in Rukiga are just a few examples.

Here is an invitation to experience more of Africa through her trees, for they are a key to knowing this complex continent's landscapes, history and diversity. It also invites you to get to know trees and the landscapes they characterise by using all your senses; wander through woodland or forest like a botanical wine connoisseur, eyeing colour, sniffing characteristic scents, sipping and tasting. To do so will, at the very least, give you an unforgettable sense of place. At best, it will bring great enjoyment to botany.

The sense of smell, as Helen Keller, blind and deaf from infancy, observed 'is a potential wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived'. Within the African landscape, many people will have memories jogged by the smell of 'cooking potato bush' Phyllanthus reticulatus wafting in the still evening air. Almost certainly these would recall times spent in the low-lying riverine and floodplain thickets and bushveld of southern and south-central Africa. Or, in moist tropical forest in East, central or south-eastern Africa, the foetid smell of a Celtis durandii tree hangs in the early morning air long before the tree itself becomes visible.

Even the smell of tree parts can be distinctive: a fresh bark slash in a magnificent pale-barked musizi tree Maesopsis eminii in a Ugandan forest has the scent of cold cooked chicken, whereas the fresh bark of a stinkwood tree Ocotea bullata smells more like pig dung; or the crushed leaves and fresh bark of the African cherry Prunus africana are reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel with their smell of bitter almonds (cyanide). No-one who has squatted next to a fire under African skies as the smell of a smouldering tamboti Spirostachys africana log drifts around him will forget the experience.

Very often a combination of senses provides the key to a tree species and a cue to memories in the bush. In addition to scent, colour can evoke a strong response, and at several spatial scales: an individual tree, or part of the tree, or a whole population of trees characterising a particular landscape at a certain time of the year. White, cream or yellow colours may be a first cue: a single 'puff' flower of a powder-puff tree Barringtonia racemosa floating in the black water of a tropical swamp forest; the white fruits of the assegaai Curtisia dentata against its dark green leaves in montane forest; or a display of white bauhinia Bauhinia petersiana in the dry Kalahari. Fragrance comes into play with scented cream knobthorn Acacia nigrescens flowers, among the first to appear in early spring, or the long, fragrant yellow spikes of the sumach elephant root Elephantorrhiza burkei in a spring miombo woodland.

Perhaps the strongest memories are those of midsummer: a yellow blaze of sweet-thorn Acacia karroo trees alive with bees and massed along the clay-rich soils of southern African scrub or woodland. Or, in East, Central or West Africa, the yellow ovoid fruits of musizi in Ugandan moist lowland forest, or the yellow flowers and immaculate leaves of a delicate boxwood Ochna thomasiana in Kenyan coastal forest. There is, too, the stunning yellow inner bark of Enantia chlorantha in the lowland forest of Cameroon, where my own memory is of time spent with a traditional healer collecting this prized medicine.

Pink and orange are also evocative colours of the African landscape. The new leaves of a tamboti colour a bushveld drainage line pink, and the plum-pink fruits of the purple-pod terminalia Terminalia spinosa brighten an autumn savanna. A young bush plum Dacroydes edulis, a species of tropical West Africa which is widely cultivated in Cameroon and Nigeria for its edible fruits, bears new fruits that are pink and turn a stunning purple-blue when ripe. Then there are the vivid, deep orange, papery calyx lobes of the Natal flame bush Alberta magna fruits, and the coppery pink leaves of the tropical milk pear Inhambanella henriquesii in dune forest, where old dry leaves are crushed crisply underfoot and a gaboon adder may lie in wait (nothing like risk to heighten the senses).

Red is another colour associated with trees of Africa, especially in forests. Red flowers and fruits stand out, displaying either a warning about distasteful, tannin-rich leaves or an invitation to pollinators or fruit dispersers. Flowers may be single, like that of the rare Diospyros preussii which sits like a ruby fungus in West African forest, or they may be en masse, like those of the tree fuchsia Halleria lucida which provide a nectar feast for sunbirds. Reddish orange arils contrasting with black seeds and pale brown skins are a common combination: in the tropical lowland forest of Cameroon Trichilia rufescens fruits, like those of its East (T. dregeana) and southern African (T. emetica) cousins, wait for birds to disperse them.

If scent and these visual displays don't make your soul sing, then experiencing trees through the taste buds and stomach will at least be memorable. Honeys are produced from the flowers of sweet-thorn trees and of mundondo Julbernardia woodland in Zambia, the latter making a dark, rich syrup. Less pleasant is the bitter, toxic honey collected from flowers of the ordeal tree Erythrophleum lasianthum. Who can forget the juicily distinctive taste and aroma of a marula Sclerocarya birrea fruit if he has ever bitten through its thick skin on a hot and dry February day? Or the flavour of Natal mahogany Trichilia emetica arils, carefully separated from the toxic black seeds and eaten with mashed sweet potato? There are over a thousand edible fruit species in Africa, in addition to more than 10000 medicinal species (which should not be tried without expert advice). We're spoilt for choice, if we'd only realise it.

Even one of the most familiar flavours and aromas around the world has its roots in Africa's forests. Few people realise that most of the 90 species of wild coffee trees are indigenous to tropical and subtropical Africa. These include Arabian coffee Coffea arabica, which is indigenous to the montane forests of Ethiopia and northern Kenya, and Congo coffee C. canephora from Central Africa, often used to make instant coffee. Another African tree that has gained international significance is the African oil-palm Elaies guineensis, indigenous to West Africa but now a major crop in south-east Asia as well as locally. The oil's orange colour and distinctive flavour characterise the cuisine of West Africa and the Congo, home to tropical Africa's most innovative cooks. These cooks also make excellent use of the fruits of several West African trees, such as dika nuts (from Irvingia gabonensis), bush plums (from Dacroydes edulis) and agussi, the ground seeds of the African breadfruit Treculia africana.

The massive timber trade from tropical Africa has brought international recognition to West African trees such as iroko Chlorophora excelsa and ekki Lophora elata. Yet some of the world's finest woods are less well known or commonly confused with other species. Makore Tieghemella heckelii trees, for example, produce a wood so fine that it is used in Rolls-Royce motorcars. And African ebony, from Dalbergia melanoxylon, is used to make the world's best clarinets. Carved by generations of Makonde craftsmen in northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania, it is such a fine wood for turning on a lathe that during the colonial period, when the economic potential of many tropical tree species was being evaluated, Dalbergia melanoxylon was the standard against which all other turned woods were assessed.

In so many African languages, the evocative names given to trees convey most clearly the links between trees and the landscape, reflecting habitat, smell or other characteristics. Simba-kigulu, for example, meaning 'lion of the termite mound' is the Bondei name for a tree which often grows on termitaria. The different names for Clausena anisata (see box, previous page) all refer to the tree's distinctive smell, but reflect different perceptions of it: the Afrikaans farmers' familiarity with horses, the keen observation of Zulu boys as they hunted field mice, and the far less accurate resemblance to aniseed noted by a closeted taxonomist. Shape, texture and even sound are also reflected in names. Anyone who has walked in miombo woodland is likely to agree with the Bondei name imagasa, meaning 'clapping hands', for Isoberlinia scheffleri, as it echoes the snap of the plant's seeds when they are explosively expelled from the dry pods in winter.

It is only when we as Africans travel out of our home landscape that we realise how close the links between the self and the landscape really are - only then that we become aware of a sense of place in Africa, and the strength of it. Only with the perspective of distance are we able to dissect out the ingredients that we have subliminally absorbed from the landscapes in which we grew up. Wandering through woodland or forest on our return home, we renew our acquaintance with trees through their characteristic smells, textures, colours and form, and it is like greeting old friends. The same is true when we encounter familiar species in other parts of the world. Seeing sicklebush Dichrostachys cinerea in the Rajastahn Desert in India, musisi Symphonia globulifera in the Amazon or the white-berry bush Fluggea virosa and cooking potato tree in north-western Australia among a diversity of unfamiliar trees is like seeing an old friend among a party of strangers.

It is only later, with knowledge of the distribution of these and other species, that we realise that these are not just African species. We can link together the many genera of trees common to the scattered pieces of the old continent Gondwanaland (of which Africa was a major part) and thus develop a Gondwanan sense of place as well. As this process continues, we finally gain a global perspective.

Learning more about the distribution of trees outside Africa makes us realize the value of African tree species which are found nowhere else in the world. Many are at risk from intense browsing or from more subtle threats, such as the cross-pollination from commercial coffee plantations that is endangering Kenya's only wild population of Coffea arabica. High rates of habitat loss, though, pose the most serious threat to Africa's indigenous trees, and to change the situation requires a change of heart. At a time when we biologists spend more and more time behind computer screens and less and less time in the field, we - as well as policy-makers and the general public - need to recapture emotional ties to the environment (and trees). At the beginning of the 21st century, trees need us too.

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