...as many years ago, this was a very dangerous tree.
In history, this tree was used to make quivers, to hold the arrows of an indigenous clan.
Known as choje to the indigenous San people, the quiver tree gets its English common name from the San people practice of hollowing out the tubular branches of Aloidendron dichotomum to form quivers for their arrows. The specific epithet "dichotomum" refers to how the stems repeatedly branch into two ("dichotomous" branching) as the plant grows
You can read the history of the wars between the Khoi, and the Dutch settlers in the Cape in Wikipedia.
So, now let me show you the peaceful side of this Quiver tree so many years later.
Beautiful flowers of the quiver aloe tree.
And here below is the peaceful side of the tree, as now it feeds sunbirds, and some other bird species.
We were so happy to see the sunbirds on the flowers, and it was almost like the tree wanted to boast to us about its peaceful usefulness now.
Due to the bad light, I will not venture to identify the bird species, save to say that they were sunbirds.
Maybe, just maybe, this female might be a Southern-double Collared sunbird.
The wet road below will show you the reason for the light conditions, but as usual it did not bother us.
Quiver trees are indigenous to South Africa, as they grow in the Northern Cape Province and also in the south of Namibia. The trees have become endangered due to its destruction by global warming ruining their habitats, and in the northern Cape, and Namibia there are now two quiver tree forests. We would so love to go up there to see the forests, but it's far away, and one would have to arrange stop overs to rest on the way there.
I have seen photos of the quiver tree forest in Namibia, and it is beautiful as the trees grow much bigger there. Hopefully it will save the extinction of the trees, so that our children's children will also be able to see them. How the quiver tree in the photos ended up here in the extreme southern tip of South Africa is a mystery, but we are glad that we can see it every day, as it is just around the corner from our place. The tree also reminds us, that peace always follows after war, but in mankind's case the peace is only an interim resting period, before the next war.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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