Nature Photo Challenge: #12 Trees

Denzil Nature: Trees

South Africa is known for its beautiful coastline on the Western Coast, but with this comes quite harsh windy and salt spray conditions for our plants and trees.

The White Milkwood tree is one of your best options for a dense shade or screen or windbreak tree along the coastal areas, because it can withstand quite extreme weather conditions.

Sideroxylon inerme is a Southern African coastal tree, with dense foliage, black berries and small, greenish flowers. The tree’s generic name means “Iron-wood” in Greek, referring to its very hard timber. It is one of South Africa’s “Protected Trees” and several specimens are provincial heritage sites. Wikipedia

Kirstenbosch gardens with lots of trees

Velddrift

Phoenix canariensis – Canary Date Palm
This classic tropical tree makes a bold statement in any large garden, estate or farm. Often planted along our coastal sidewalks due to its excellent tolerance to strong winds and sea spray. It has become very popular over the years due to its capacity to store water in the trunk of the stem, making it a great waterwise choice in drought-stricken areas. The birds also like to use the foliage for building their nests.

Palm trees

Palm tree on the beach – Saldanha

Palm Trees – Port Owen

Buddleja saligna – False Olive / Witolien 

Fast growing, indigenous and evergreen with stunning flowers? Sign us up for this tree please!

This is a very versatile tree that can be pruned into a beautiful tree shape as well as kept low for hedging purposes. The lovely woven-like bark also adds ornamental value and the beautiful balls of blossoms in summer gives this tree a wow-factor! To top it off, it can do well in windy conditions, coastal conditions and clay soil

Young False Olive trees

Buddleja saligna, the false olive or bastard olive, is almost endemic to South Africa where it has a wide distribution. It occurs most often in ravines and against outcrops, and is distributed from coastal elevations to the central plateau at elevations of < 2000 m.

If you look closely, you will find a sunbird hiding in this tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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