It is a brand new year and we’re celebrating with our brand new calendar!
This year, we have included a whole range of incredible indigenous plants for you to put in your garden when replacing those all-consuming alien invasive plants that grow so prolifically along our idyllic coast.
We are all about biodiversity. As you well know, our biodiversity is constantly threatened by agriculture, infrastructure development and pollution. However, a silent killer is the alien invasive plants that outcompete our indigenous plants and take over whole forests. They also pose a major threat to our indigenous cultural medicine, as we are losing our knowledge of the plants.
We thus publish our calendar every year to highlight these invasives, as well as promote a selection of beautiful, useful, indigenous plants that require little to no care to thrive in their home environment. In theory, outcompete the invasives with indigenous!
We chose umzimbeet as our January indigenous gem for a couple of reasons. Traditionally, umzimbeet is used together with croton root and certain animal fats to dispel worries, a good start to a year I’d think. Secondly, because of its usefulness and value from furniture to medicine and even fish and arrow poison, thus inspiring us to think of life as a series of opportunities. And lastly, of course, it is a spectacular tree when in flower, reminding us that we come into our own when we accept ourselves and connect with the Divine.
This tree can grow up to 25m tall. It doesn’t have an aggressive root system and is great for living fences, anywhere in a garden or on a street. The little mauve to purple flowers are held upright in fluorescence at the ends of branches framed in a crown of large glossy dark green to blue green leaves. It puts on a spectacular show in January before going into fruit. What also makes this tree unique is the yellow sapwood and very heavy, hard reddish heartwood giving the wood a dichromatic effect which is what makes it so prized by furniture makers.
We sell our calendars to help fund our ongoing work in protecting our local biodiversity, cleaning, and preserving our oceans and rivers, and environmental education. Our 2024 KZN Biodiversity calendar is now available. To find a stockist or to collect your own copy, contact Joan on WhatsApp 083 2667953.
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