They sometimes host colonies of sociable weaver birds that build vast communal nests in the thorny branches. And the trees' usefulness goes further: the San people would hollow out their tubular branches to make holders for the arrows used to hunt game, hence the popular name quiver tree.
The scientific name for these strange beauties is Aloe dichotoma. And while they may look impregnable, with a crown of thorny leaves and a sturdy trunk, they are sadly in decline. Slow-growing and long lived - up to 200 years! - they are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Populations at the northern end of their range, nearer to the equator, are failing. You would therefore imagine that nature would nudge them southwards, but that's not so easily done with such a slow-growing species. Scientists have contemplated seeding new populations further south in a process called "assisted colonisation" but this has attracted controversy.
Frances Whittington, the heroine of my new novel, The Fire Portrait, discovers a small group of quivers in the veld outside the fictional Karoo town where she lives. She begins to paint them, especially when they are in flower and covered with sunbirds greedily drinking their nectar. They are one of several spiky semi-desert aloe species that she covers, and which begin to cement her reputation as a botanical artist. Until one day, when tragedy strikes, she turns to another subject.
There is one other fact about quiver trees that is intriguing, and it comes again from those master hunters of the desert plains, the San: the trunk of a dead tree, when hollowed out, becomes a natural fridge for the storage of meat, vegetables and water. The fibrous tissue of the trunk cools the air passing through it...
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