Colours of Wildlife: Bakone Malapa Plant Walk
Created | Updated Nov 24, 2019
Bakone Malapa Plant Walk
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
On 19 October I hosted an outing to the Bakone Malapa Open Air Museum. Bakone Malapa, or the Northern Sotho Museum, is a museum protecting and showcasing a wonderful archaeological site to the south of Polokwane. For several centuries a community from the Pedi or Northern Sotho lived there. There are lovely hills on which they built a settlement; hills a short distance away from the settlement offer caves and overhangs where women and children could shelter in times of war. Today there are houses in the traditional style at the bottom of the hill, with walls and cattle enclosures as they were back in the day; there are also samples of baskets, pottery and implements they used, and employees give daily demonstrations of the skills used by the old-time folks in order to live off the land. I will one day go to the museum to take photos and write a report of all of this, as it's fascinating.
But this outing was for plants. The entire region around the museum is rich in many species of plants, which was of course a huge asset for the people who lived (and still live) there, since these are the plants they used for food, for materials, and for medicinal purposes. I planned the outing some time in advance, and was hoping that by this time it would have rained a bit so that the plants would have been sprouting and flowering; alas, this was not to be. We've had an extremely dry start to the year, and on the day of the outing the veld was bare and brown. We hardly had any shade since almost none of the trees had leaves. This meant I had to identify the plant species mainly on the details of their bark and their shape. But this was, I think, a fine challenge, since it meant I had to show the people many of those little small details. I did in the end manage to identify about forty species, including trees, shrubs, succulents, climbers and herbs. We also enjoyed great views of the surroundings from the tops of the hills, as you can see here. You can hardly make out the town of Polokwane, and you can see and appreciate that there's still a lot of wild or semi-wild land in the region.
Just note that the following info is not exactly what I told the folks on the walk; I kept it short and simple for them, but here I give you a bit more than I told them including some additional research I did after coming back.
The black-and white photo shows me with a Climbing Cactus, Cissus quadrangularis, which is actually not a cactus at all but a succulent species of the grape family. The fleshy stems are cut and crushed, then applied as a salve to sores and wounds, including wounds that are infested by maggots! It's also applied to the wombs of goats to make them go into labour faster. Juice from the stems are used to treat earache, and decoctions of the roots for muscle pains or inflammation.
This photo shows me telling people about this Num-Num Bush, Carissa bispinosa. Num-nums are some of the tastiest of wild fruits – this one has small red berries. The roots of the bush are used to treat toothaches.
In this photo showing the view from the top of the hills, you can see a large cactus in the foreground. This is indeed a true cactus, a Prickly Pear, Opuntia ficus-indica. In Afrikaans we call it a Turksvy or Turkish Fig. It's not a pear, or a fig, or from Turkey. Opuntia-cacti are from the Americas where a number of species grow in various different regions. This particular species has been widely planted in South Africa for its very tasty fruits; they're enjoyed by man and beast. The flat stems or cladodes are eaten by animals, and when picked young can be eaten by humans as salad vegetables. Fully grown cladodes can be used to make soap. The fruit can be eaten as is, or pickled, made into jams, syrups, alcoholic drinks and flavourants for ice cream and yoghurt. The Pedi people made wine from the fermented fruit.
Despite how useful this cactus is, it is causing some ecological problems. Every fruit is packed with round, black seeds, which germinate from the droppings of animals that eat them. This has resulted in the cacti invading the wild veld in massive numbers, to the extent of forming great swathes of impenetrable thickets, excluding humans and animals and crowding out our native plants. Prickly pear bushes in natural regions, including at Bakone, should properly be eradicated. They use a poison for that but there's also been a natural cactus predator, a small beetle whose grubs feed on their stems, introduced to South Africa as a form of biological control.
Other interesting plants we found include the Dead Man's Tree, Synadenium cupulare. It is sometimes included in the genus Euphorbia. The photo you see here, was taken on a different outing when the veld was much greener. This small, succulent tree has many superstitions surrounding it. While it does have a poisonous milky sap, which can cause skin and eye irritation from handling parts of the plants, the myths go further. The tree is said to actively lure people and animals to their deaths! It is said to cry with the voice of a plumed serpent, which in turn is said to bleat like a goat. The ground around the tree is said to be white with the bones of animals and people, and even birds that fly over the tree would fall dead to the ground. Well, I've seen and touched this tree on several occasions and I'm still here! And indeed, paradoxically the local people also do use the tree medicinally. The leaves can be used to treat headache, toothache and asthma. They're also used to treat animals though I can't find details about that. The sap has been chemically investigated and have substances that inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandin, a fatty acid that has hormone-like actions in controlling a number of bodily systems and processes like inflammation.
The black dry sticks you see here are the stems of Baboon's Tail, Xerophyta retinervis. This is a plant with grass-like leaves and large, beautiful, lily-like flowers, that emerge from the top of these black stick-like stems. The stems are covered in fibrous leaf remains, and get this black colour mainly from veld fires; the outer sheath of fibers burns at a relatively low temperature, so that the inner living tissue is protected and remains alive, to sprout again in the spring and summer. These strange plants can grow to a height of over 2 m/6'6" and are widespread in grassy and/or rocky places in north-eastern South Africa. I hope to get a shot of their flowers some day; if I do, you'll see it.
Other useful plants in the area include the aloes, which I've already mentioned in this column; their leaves contain a sap that can be used as a purgative, or as a dye, and the dry leaves are used as kindling. The Tinderwood, Clerodendrum glabrum, has a soft wood that's also used to light fires, and its leaves have insect-repelling and medicinal properties. The sandpaper raisin, Grewia flavescens, is a scrambling shrub to small tree. The berries are sweet and edible, and can be used to make a refreshing drink. I am sure the wood and bark is used as well, but I'll have to go back one day and specifically ask the employees for the details.
We decided to go back again after we've had some good rains. Well, we've been having the good rains indeed over the last week or so, so I'm hoping we can manage to get back soon and find many more plants. And I can tell folks a bit more then also, based on the new things I've learnt!
