Knowledge is power

 The old man was sharing his knowledge with a younger woman in the family. Well-prepared with sharp badza and sack to collect the roots of this wild plum, Carissa edulis (muruguru), they told me it was good for stomach problems. On a previous drive they had noticed the plant and wanted to make acquaintance with the house owner.
It got me thinking about knowledge, where it resides and how we pass it on. Those plants came from the National Botanic Gardens years ago.  We wanted a boundary border that would be both useful and beautiful. The head gardener was not only able to advise us but also to supply the plants from this national nursery. The result is a row of prickly wild plums, which every second year, bear a proliferation of sweet, refreshing yellow fruit attracting birds and passing children. Along with completely impenetrable acacia ataxacantha, also a haven for birdlife, its thorny spines make a daunting but pretty barrier.
Harare’s Botanical Garden is one repository of plant knowledge. Established in 1962 with a grant of £50,000 from the Combined Oil Industry who wanted to contribute to the environment, the gardens were designed to showcase the different bio-habitats of Zimbabwe and the wealth of her plant life
Tom Muller, co-creator and long-time curator of Harare’s National Botanic Gardens and Herbarium turned 80 this year. To celebrate, the Tree Society organised a walk around the Gardens with Tom, followed by personal tributes from the many people and organizations whose lives he has touched – and a lunch at the Garden café.
Tom has been leading walks in the Botanical gardens for years –  engaging  interested amateurs in identifying trees and their families – embellishing the walks with folk lore and anecdotes about particular trees. One member commented that she loved the Tree Society for hardly ever covering more than 120 metres of ground – leaving plenty of time to contemplate. Certainly our group went no further than that from the meeting place at the Café but what a fascinating 120 metres! It included the first tree planted in the gardens in 1963. Now a mature 50 year old, it towered magnificently above us.
He pointed out the signs of stress in the milkwood – Chrysophyllum gorungosanum – one of the giants of Chirinda forest. The huge low altitude forest trees are slowly dying of          thirst taking as much as a decade to expire. The ponds are dry and there is not enough water to sustain these habitats. Tom had originally planned a tour of the high altitude forest but the trees are dead and the forest gone.
All the same the gardens are beautiful with gracious expanses of cut grass, green after the rain, showing off the mature trees. Fifty years later Tom’s early vision is visible in spite of the forests overgrown with weeds and distressed with dying trees. Near the dried up pond is a lovely spreading fig – ficus sycomorus – dripping with fruit. Tom remembers the seed as coming from Chinhoyi Caves.
He pointed out a group of ancient erythrinas and noted how these trees mark the fragments of Gondwanaland – the mega continent that once joined Australia, Africa, and South America.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com