Philippa Garson
LOOK! It’s got imparipinnate leaves and obovate leaflets on a short petiole: it must be a Xanthocercis zambesiaca! Such an observation would stir as little excitement in the bellies of aspirant nature lovers as would a sighting of Psuedogyps africanus – unless, of course, the party was told it was looking at a white-backed vulture.
Which is exactly why bird lovers came up with books of common names for birds and, lo and behold, birdwatching was born. Now, some 30 years later, Jacana Education is attempting to bring the same popular appeal to tree-watching, or tree spotting, as they’ve coined it, and have brought out a tree spotting guide.
Sponsored by Sappi (which has been rewarded with some generous advertising for its efforts with the publication called Sappi Tree Spotting: Lowveld) the book is a user- friendly guide to trees in the Lowveld for the most ignorant among us. A Xanthocercis zambesiaca will translate into a Nyala tree and we’ll discover useful information about it such as where it grows, its links with animals (baboons eat the fruit); its human uses (the fruits are dried and made into porridge), what its polished bark looks like and whether it grows well in the garden.
With its beautiful illustrations and accessible information, Sappi Tree Spotting: Lowveld brings trees to vivid life, pointing out their most startling and easily visualised characteristics. It even identifies ”the big six” – six
large trees that stand out in the Lowveld and can be found by looking in the right ecozone. The guide gives prominence to common names, with the Latin name and national tree number relegated to secondary status.
Jacana MD and creative director for the tree-spotting project, Val Thomas, says the book has taken a giant step in going for the popular market and coming up with a user-friendly tree classification system – associating specific locations with a few trees likely to be found there. Thus, not all trees in the Lowveld location will appear in the guide, but it s likely that most of those in the book can be discovered with a bit of help.
”We’ve simplified the search image to three to four key features, which a person is easily able to imagine.” This is a radical departure from the many existing tree books which classify trees according to their Latin-name families.
”There s a mountain of scientific information out there that relates to wild life, but it’s very difficult for your average tourist to access that information. Most people don’t want to read reams of scientific textbooks to get to grips with the environment,” says Thomas. Because trees are so diverse and the relationship between them is so complex, in most tree guides ”you’ll find Latin names followed by a battery of descriptions like ‘this tree is tall, sometimes short, deciduous, sometimes evergreen’ because scientists have had to cover themselves,” says Thomas.
Most other field guides expect you to drive until you find a specimen, then diagnose it. Given that trees surround us in their multitudes in reserves like the Kruger Park, this approach would trigger dementia. The tree spotting way involves using the ”search images” – such as a ”sparse canopy” in the case of the knobthorn – to identify trees. There is also a category of ”trees that greet you”, because of their unusual characteristics, like the baobab, with its upside-down appearance and massive trunk, or because they are ”seasonally striking”, like the sjambok pod, which has exceptionally long pods for most of the year.
Does the guide to this new sport get the sanction of botanists and tree fundis with its popular approach?
One botanist describes the approach as ”brave”. Jutta von Breitenbach, secretary of the Dendrological Society, says she has no problem with the book from a botanical point of view.
Sappi Tree Spotting: Lowveld costs R149,80 and is available in major bookstores. Treespotting guides of Highveld and Cape trees are due to be published soon