Erythrina Livingstonia request

Just wondered if anyone on your site knows where I can find a specimen (seedling, truncheon or other) of Erythrina Livingstonia or Tiger Claw (a small (12-15’), uncommon tree from Mozambique. Intense red flowers in the spring. Full sun.)

You can mail me on jmr2667@gmail.com

Kind Regards

John

Grow a tree!

My sister recently blogged on a new initiative, Grow a Tree, and as it is Arbor Month, I thought it was an opportune moment to share this. The organisation sells starter packs so that you can choose and grow up to twelve indigenous, South African trees from scratch! In a bag! Pretty cool! I think this is a great idea as a gift for someone with enough space or as a means to green open spaces, parks etc with some guerrilla gardening. What do you think?

Arbor Month

Arbor Month starts today, and isn’t it also the first day of spring?  In any case, you have a month to plant a tree and some of the larger supermarkets (Pick ‘n Pay, Woolworths, maybe others?) have made it really easy, selling young, indigenous trees in the flower aisle.

So no excuses, get planting

Tree in a pot

My mom recently won an indigenous tree in a competition (cool prize, hey?). Its a Milletia grandis or umSimbithi in Zulu. Its endemic to KwaZulu-Natal and grows near the coast, flowering at Christmas with a mass of purple flowers. Unfortunately, it has now become quite rare in the wild as its wood is very hard and prized for walking and fighting sticks as well as agricultural implements.

As luck would have it, there was a baby tree growing in the bag which I quickly appropriated and am now growing in a pot. Hopefully it will be happy and I’ll move it to a larger pot as the tree matures.

Cool tree

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