A few local South African readers have asked why I don’t have more info on our local indigenous plants. My answer is that most of my readers are from the US and the UK, but I saw this article in one of our local magazines and thought you would like it. It is on the Assegai Tree, which is indigenous to South Africa.

The tree is known as Assegai, Assegaai, Assegaaihout (Afrikaans), umLahleni (Zulu), usirayi, and umGxina (Xhosa). The Latin Botanical name is Curtisia dentate.

This is a tree, that even in 1906, was considered to be scarce in the forests of Southern Africa, from the southern Cape, right through to Mpumalanga and Limpopo Province escarpments, including the inland forests of Swaziland. The timber, as Thomas Sim wrote in his wonderful book “The Forests And Forest Fauna Of  The Cape Colony” in 1906, is a “hard, dry wood that shrinks less than most other timbers.” It was for this reason that the timber and young stems of this tree were used to make assegai and spear shafts. Hence the name.

However, by Sim’s time, the tree had already become scarce as its timber was mainly used in the manufacture of spokes for wagon wheels. The non-shrinking habit of the wood was important, especially in our climate with its extremes of wet and dry, plus hot and cold and the wagon spokes were tested over some very tough terrain, with virtually non-existent tracks.

Nowadays, this tree is still quite scarce, though it has succumbed, not to over-harvesting for its timber, but rather to the collection of its bark for the traditional medicine trade. I have seen some really big specimens in a forest in KZN, where the bark is squared and fissured, a bit like the forest equivalent of Tamboti – Spriostachys Africana, but I won’t mention the forest, as it might cause herb gatherers to pay the place a visit.

The best seedling plants I have ever seen are in the Harold Porter Botanic Garden at Betty’s Bay. This seed is viable and has grown seedlings for me. There are a few specimens planted in the grounds of the Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife offices at Queen Elizabeth Park, in Pietermaritzburg. There is also one specimen (needles to say, it has been debarked) growing fairly well in the Durban Botanic Gardens, but it has, due to the debarking, been forced to coppice, thus losing the usual majestic stature of a mature tree.

The trees are quite small, only about 6 metres tall and they produce masses of seed. The fruit is a pale, creamy-white colour and drip off the ends of the branches, creating a feast for the birds and monkeys of the forests. I have watched Rameron Pigeons (now called the African Olive Pigeon) feeding, in their dozens, on a tree that was in fruit. The soft flesh is ideal for the birds and once the flesh was digested, the seeds would be dropped off, clean and ready to germinate a day, or so later, in another part of the forest.

The leaves of young saplings have a more dentate, or toothed look, than do the mature leaves, that tend to have a smoother, or blunt-toothed look to them. New leaves are a lovely russet colour, making the tree stand out, amongst the dark green of the surrounding forest.

This plant is not commonly grown, due to the fact that seed is not always available, but I would use it as a specimen tree, in a large garden. Don’t sentence it to a life of being trimmed, by using it in a small garden. This is one tree that needs space, to reach its full grandeur.

This article was written by Geoff Nichols, for The Grapevine, a local South African home magazine. Visit their website at: http://www.thegrapevine.co.za

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Sally Robson is married to Derek, an up and coming South African internet marketer, with a vision of empowering all fellow South Africans and non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet. They have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. She also has a passion for gardening. For more articles and advice on gardening topics, visit Sally’s website at http://www.dersalsites.com/gardening/  and her blog at http://dersalsites.com/sallysgardeningtips

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