We Are The Champions, The Champion Trees Of South Africa
Published by HPH Publishing
Selling price: R690
Reviewed by Sheree Bega
No one had heard of the King of Ga-Ratjeke. Towering like arboreal royalty over the nondescript homes of the dusty Limpopo village after which it was named, it remained undiscovered, hidden from tourist routes, escaping attention from the outside world.
That was until a team of big tree enthusiasts encountered the “village veteran” several years ago, and were welcomed by curious residents as they hauled out their instruments to measure the baobab giant.
These revealed that the King of Ga-Ratjeke is the third-largest indigenous tree in South Africa – its gigantic trunk splits into two main branches just under chest height, and the bigger of these is more than 25m in circumference.
The government thought it so spectacular that it granted it Champion Tree status in 2010.
Nearby, the ancient Platland Baobab, its record trunk circumference exceeding 33m, had long made headlines, with its bar and cellar making the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Not bad for a 1 000-year-old tree.
These botanical treasures are among 75 officially proclaimed Champion Trees featured in a newly published book, We Are The Champions – The Champion Trees of SA, the first visual record of the country’s Champion Trees “in all their glory”.
To achieve this, husband-and-wife team Enrico and Erna Liebenberg spent two years travelling nearly 40 000km, visiting some of the most remote corners, to help “preserve a relatively unknown section of South Africa’s natural heritage”.
Champion Trees are regarded as trees of exceptional importance and deserving of national protection because of their remarkable size, age, aesthetic and cultural, historic, or tourism value.
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ project is the only one of its kind on the continent and is aimed at listing and protecting trees, groves and tree lanes of national conservation importance.
The book features a photograph of Izak van der Merwe, the department’s co-ordinator of the project, standing in front of the first Champion Tree, an old, historic oak in Sophiatown.
The oak gave rise to the project, and before its death, had been a silent witness to the forced removals that ripped Sophiatown’s cosmopolitan community apart, and to the meetings of anti-apartheid activists and religious leaders, including Father Trevor Huddleston, held in its shade.
In 2003, the then-Department of Water Affairs and Forestry invoked an emergency clause to protect the oak tree after a homeowner tore off its limbs. But it was too late – the tree died and today no sign of its existence or its majesty remains.
The awe-inspiring collection of Champion Trees is protected under the National Forests Act .
It “should be preserved for future generations to visit and admire, to enchant these generations with their beauty and the monumental – sometimes monstrous – sizes to which some of them have grown and beyond which they continue to grow”, note Van der Merwe and his long-time friend, Naas Grové, who runs the Dendrological Society of southern Africa, in the book.
The book immortalises other record-breakers, like the Sagole Baobab, the “champion among champions” in the Vheme district in Limpopo. The largest measured baobab in South Africa, it has a trunk circumference that places it among the top five trees in the world with the stoutest trunks.
The tallest tree in Africa, a Saligna gum tree growing in the Woodbush State Forest in Limpopo, is a jaw-dropping 79m.
The City of Tshwane boasts the 1 000-year-old Wonderboom wild fig tree, which is “guarded by the spirit of a chief” and measures 61m from one side to the other – making its crown the largest of all trees in the country.
Then there’s Joburg’s lonely Ruth Fischer Tree, which was a “landmark for fugitives” from the apartheid government, growing near an Auckland Park safe house run by lawyer Bram Fischer’s daughter. Van der Merwe and a councillor saved the Lombardy poplar after it and others lining Fawley Avenue were earmarked for removal.
By the end of this year, the department will have declared more than 70 trees and groups of trees champions. “The Champion Trees reflect all facets of the diverse South African nation and all eras in its history. But the single most awe-inspiring aspect of the trees is their size. That’s the wow factor.”
To Van der Merwe, life without them would be “unthinkable”.
“They stir something deep within us… that lifts our spirits above our earthly existence.”
Pretoria News