South Africa celebrates Arbour Week in the first week of September annually, a campaign driven by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment,the custodian of forestry in South Africa.
During the month of September focus is placed on the country’s champion trees which include some of the oldest, largest and culturally significant trees. These include the Sophia Town Oak Tree and the Sagole Baobab Tree in Limpopo, which are part of our heritage.
National Arbour Week is an opportune time to call on all South Africans to plant indigenous trees as a practical and symbolic gesture of sustainable environmental management.
It affords the government, the private sector, non-governmental and community based organisations and the public to be involved in “greening” their communities. Planting trees and greening human settlements takes place in communities.
And this year’s tree of the year is the pompon tree or pincushion tree also known as, kannabas, speldekussing or basboom.
The pompon tree is one of the best known and well-loved indigenous trees, tough enough to be used as a street tree and small enough to fit into most gardens. When in flower at Christmas it looks like a giant candy floss, as the tree transforms into a cloud of soft pink balls. Its natural home is the eastern part of South Africa where it grows on the margins of forests, wooded hill slopes and in stony kloofs.
It is a relatively small tree growing only to six metres, with a lovely rounded, leafy crown. It can be single – or multi-stemmed, with the brown stems covered in small speckles of whitish cork. The smooth, simple leaves are bright green, sometimes with a slight bluish tinge on the upper side. The veins of the leaves are a translucent yellow colour, forming very clear patterns as they run through the leaves. The leaves are usually scattered up the branches or crowded at the ends of the branches. In very cold areas the trees are deciduous, but in warmer climates like Cape Town they only lose their leaves for a short time at the end of winter.
The trees flower in early summer, any time from November to December. In the city of Cape Town the street trees flower in November and in the more protected environment of Kirstenbosch, the trees only flower in December.
The new flower buds look like lollypops, with big round heads on long thin stems at the end of the branches. The green heads pop open with the many small flowers in tight bunches inside, looking like pink fluff balls. For about three weeks the tree flowers in profusion. The tiny black seeds are formed in the bottom of the little flowers and are ready to collect about a month or two after flowering.
After flowering, the green cup shaped bracts that held the flowers become hard and brown, remaining on the tree for many months. These dried “flowers” can be used for decorations, model building and children’s games.
