Adam Small
My recent writing about flowers (April 15) stemmed from a need for good cheer – and made me curious also about their cousins next-door: trees.
John Fowles, writer of The Tree, speaks of these plants enigmatically. He preferred them in clumps, as woods or forests.
Characteristic about a wood for Fowles was “the silence, the waitingness of the place”. It is “so haunting ... fairy-like”. For him it was “like heaven” to be in a wood! Wherever he found himself, the wood was calling. Woods were spiritual succour for him, “nature’s consolation, the justification and the redemption” of life!
I respect this enthusiasm of his, but cannot share his love of such denseness, and I prefer trees which leave a view of the open sky. I find it claustrophobic if I cannot find light or, on very bright days, the sun.
Trees represent the biggest growths on earth, and have a longer history than anything else. Many have been growing for “even thousands of years”, some “higher than 30-storey buildings”!
In this selective overview, my first choice for beauty among trees is the lyrical weeping willow, a plant native to China. Prints of the Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige offer some of the most engaging images of these “weeping trees”.
About 300 species of willow are known, some having catching names: black willow (because of its dark bark), crack willow (whose twigs break easily), basket willow (from whose branches wicker carriers are woven), and white willow (because of the silvery underside of the leaves).
Willows prefer living near water. They are truly graceful, some growing as tall as 36.5m – which is very tall, considering that the American sequoias, redwoods and sugar pines – some of the largest “living things” – reach heights of 70m to 91m. Frivolously, one wonders what happens, in the way of growth, among leaves at the very top of a tree so tall, and millennia old!
On the other side of this scale, the smallest willow grows only about 2.5cm high, thriving in polar regions (still near water!).
Palms, growing straight up with no branching, are as ancient. The coconut palm produces a large oval, husky-hulled fruit, consisting (from the outside inwards) of the husk, which contains a tasteful, edible white flesh, which in turn cups the clear, sweet coconut milk.
Coconuts can float, and they wash out on beaches anywhere, where they settle and often start growing!
The date palm (or Canary Isle palm) is quite ubiquitous, preferring warm places, however. Like most palms, it is versatile, producing substances of various use: food (many of us love dates); wood for building; and material for clothing. The so-called royal palm has a very tall trunk, with a stately crown of leaves. There are some growing around the corner from where I live in the South Peninsula! On Bergvliet Road there are two elegant rows of them, one on either side of the avenue. I have often wondered about who planted these trees, ever so long ago! Some of them might have sprung from seeds just blown there, but not all of them – at least not in two such neat rows!
There is also the oil palm, which offers a sweet-smelling pulp which, when processed, provides (among other things) soap and cosmetics.
A strange variation of trees are “dwarves”. They are real trees, which never achieve full size. Many of them “grow naturally in arctic regions”. However, others are deliberately “kept small by special pruning”. I have always felt uneasy about this inhibiting of growth. Unfortunately, trees cannot resist gardeners’ contrivance against them!
Contrariwise, the ombu tree exhibits an amazing, almost aggressive, will-to-be, a permanence that refuses to be attacked! Starved of water, it makes itself need little. It defies onslaught by insects or violent weather; it will live through intense heat; and, above all, it refuses to be cut or burnt down: its wood is “so moist and so spongy”, destruction of it by axe or fire is impossible!
Another fascinating tree is the African baobab. It has a massive trunk, which can be hollowed so people can live in it and, at the same time, eat its fruit, leaves, seeds and roots.
In Madagascar there is a gentle “traveller’s tree” which seems to feel pity for those on long journeys! It stores water “inside the base of each of its long leaf stalks”, and provides “thirsty travellers” with fresh drink!
When one rides into Phoenix in Arizona, you are “confronted by the sight” of vast stretches of desert cactuses: mainly saguaros (though there are hundreds of kinds of cactus). The plant is designed to hold water and grows sharp spikes on its surface to protect it from ravages by animals. The spikes grow from parts of the plant called aereoles (“which look like cushions”), and “beautiful flowers” grow from them.
Cactuses are also good indoor plants.
I must not forget cactuses that bear prickly pears! There were some growing in the veld near Robertson. I remember them for their delicious fruit: we sliced the thick skin neatly, pulled it off in strips, avoiding the spikes – and enjoyed the flesh, a real delicacy! (Some shops still sell prickly pears – at a price.)
A most interesting tree is the tropical clove. The cloves are the tree’s flower buds, reddish to start with. In its matured form, when they have dried and turned black, we use cloves as a spice. Its smell is pleasantly pungent. The tree itself grows quite tall (in Indonesia, Tanzania, Madagascar and the West Indies). Now Rosalie knows what she is handling when seasoning our pea soup! It is thrilling to realise how, as one goes about the kitchen, you have your hands on the pulse of Earth’s history: all of its “bright-blessed days”, and “dark sacred nights”! Peas are legumes, and we may as well remember that it has something to do with clovers, three-leafed or otherwise (clovers also being legumes). With appreciation to Louis Armstrong, “what a wonderful world”:
I see trees of green,
red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself:
What a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue,
and clouds of white,
the bright-blessed day,
the dark sacred night.
And I think to myself:
What a wonderful world!
Rosalie pointed out that my account of trees would be incomplete without mention of pines.
So I searched for pictures of conifers, and singled out an image of an “old Jeffrey” pine. Its stem and branches were writhing, twisted and bent – at face value not a flattering sight. But it tells the deep story of an ages-long, heroic struggle of the tree against high, howling winds: a thoroughly poetic punctuation of Time…
I came to know pines appreciatively when, before university days, I at times visited family in Steurhof. They lived across an open field, and there were pines growing there.
I would gather some of the cones shed, and at home forked out the nuts. They were tasty! (It occurred to me later: what if they were also poisonous?)
As for other conifers, there was a time when, as a child, I did not like cypresses. I saw them in their young triangular form, tapering upward and remembered them as “graveyard trees” – growing, as they were, on the edge of a cemetery in Wellington. I was wrong, of course – but wisdom comes later than childhood. The “dynamic spirals” and “sinuous lines” of Van Gogh’s cypresses, which he painted while at Saint-Rémy, were helpful in turning my attitude…
And mulberry trees? I have an ordinary mulberry growing in sandy soil here at home, and (proudly) also a weeping mulberry which, unfortunately, is reaching the end of its lifespan – after more than 35 years: what a beautiful tree it has been, “weeping” all the years.
I must mention olives and juniper:
I see olive trees growing on the side of the highway between Cape Town and Wellington: orchards of them inbetween the vineyards of this beautiful countryside. (Some of us know olives only on pizza!)
And I saw Junipers – knotty, unimpressively brown-grey bushes – growing on the rim of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. The gin processed from the juniper berry is beautifully refreshing if frugally used with a chaser. With age, however, I do not indulge in this luxury any longer!
A last thought for now: The traveller’s tree and the baobab make me think (in wonderment): it is almost as if these plants have some special consciousness, a keen awareness that relates caringly to us – as if they would lighten life for us. All of this may be shrouded in mystery, but it is a comforting thought that something like pervasive love, an overall attraction of everything to everything, does exist!