Blooming marvelous

I’ve noticed this striking tree in bloom all around my neighbourhood – in the scary kid park, outside the Pakistani hairdresser and lining the streets. Its the middle of winter so quite surprising to see such a display of colour. It is great but I know little about it – could it be indigenous?

Patrick

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What tree is this?

I was out in KwaMashu earlier this week, conducting training for INK Urban Renewal, and this tree was all over the place.  I originally noticed it because its remarkable pods make a great rustling noise when the wind blows.  Does anyone recognise it?  Is it indigenous?  I took a couple of seeds and may try to germinate it.

Mystery Tree.

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Warning – strangler at work

In an earlier post, my brother lamented the scourge of syringa berry trees in Durban.  In the comments section it was suggested that strangler figs could be used to combat them.  I regularly jog down Manning Road and spotted a strangler fig at work on a Flamboyant.

Warning - strangler at work

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Baby Coral Trees

My brother has grown two coral trees from seed and Kirsty has volunteered to give them a good home  (I already have three in my garden).

It really is an easy tree to propagate and is very rewarding in your garden.  It has beautiful, bright red flowers each spring (which attract the sunbirds) and loses all its leaves in winter, which I particularly like.

Baby Coral Trees

The case of the black moss

A couple of years back I planted a fever tree outside our gate.  The tree never really took off.  It didn’t die or look sickly, it just never seemed to grow.  I put it down to the fact that the soil I had planted it in was this terrible, sandy, red earth and decided to give it some time to come right.

However, earlier this year, I noticed a black moss growing on the trunk and branches of the tree and thought I better do something about it.  First I Googled black moss but didn’t come up with anything useful.  Then I went to take a closer look at the tree and noticed hundreds of small, black ants moving up and down the tree trunk.  Could the ‘black moss’ actually be the ants footprints, I wondered?

After a bit more Googling, I found something that surprised me.  Both the ants and black moss were indicator species, pointing to the real culprit, aphids.  I went back to inspect the tree for a third time and lo and behold, there in the leaves, were hundreds of tiny aphids.

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