Trees in my Garden 4

16. Nandi Flame (Spathodea). A truly local tree, named after Kenya’s Nandi Hills, and celebrated in ‘The Flame Trees of Thika’. Its greatest feature is its bright orange-red clusters of flowers, with petals edged with yellow, creating its spectacular flame effect. The bark is also good for curing liver complaints, and when boiled makes a great treatment for nappy rash! And hummingbirds love them. A flaming great tree!

17. African Wild Date Palm (Phoenix reclinata). A handsome maverick of a tree, 5 metres high with a regal crown of fronds. Even though this tree’s main purpose is to look impressive, you can, if you are hungry enough, eat its oval shaped fruit once they ripen from green to brown. Or you can try climbing up its old leaf scarred trunk, and sit opulently among its dioecious (either male or female) flowers!

18. Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina). When you need some shade, try sitting under this tree. It’s a big evergreen, with drooping foliage that keeps you cool all day long. Apparently it’s the official tree of Bangkok – well the sun’s pretty hot there, so they need all the natural air-conditioning they can get.

19. African Pencil Cedar (Juniperus procera). An evergreen highland forest tree. It has prickly leaves, and grows small yellow male cones and purple-blue female cones, which look a bit like berries. The timber is great for house-building, making poles, posts, furniture, pencils and as beehives. It’s also great for fuel. If you grind up the young twigs and buds and then soak them in water you will have a great cure for intestinal worms! Yum yum.

20. Indian Rubber Plant (Ficus elastica). Another tree familiar to British indoor plant aficionados. But this one is about 20m tall. It’s actually part of the banyan family of fig trees, and it lives in a co-evolved relationship with the fig wasp, that it relies on for pollination. In some parts of India these trees are used to form ‘living bridges’ by growing them over chasms, some of them over 500 years old! The ‘rubber’ name comes from the latex in the tree – at one time these trees were used to make rubber, but they are not the main commercial source of rubber – that is the pará rubber tree. In fact the latex can be fatal if swallowed – try eating liquid rubber and you will discover why.

Trees in my Garden 3

11. Kentia Palm (Howea Forsteriana). A simple no nonsense old fashioned palm tree, that doesn’t really do anything except remind you of tropical beaches.

And here are its fruit.

12. Bombax (Chorisia Speciosa). The elderly king of trees in this garden. A mighty goliath from Brazil. Its long curvaceous trunk rises up into the sky, topped with a huge rounded crown way up in the canopy. It has big mauve-pink flowers with yellowish-white and pink into the middle. Its big oval woody capsuled fruit split open on the tree, revealing seeds embedded in fine white fibres, which yield cotton-like material, which is used for stuffing toys and cushions. An exciting tree!

13. Candelabra Euphorbia (Euphorbia Candelabrum). Posh name! A local tree, but from the savannah. It has a crown of big spiky succulent branches, kind of half tree half cactus. In traditional medicine part of it is given to women after childbirth to clear out the afterbirth. Ooowsh. This is done very carefully, because the soft branches also produce a sticky white latex that is extremely poisonous – a single drop in the eye can cause blindness, and will blister the skin of a cow. Its small yellow-green flowers attract bees, but the honey can’t be eaten as it irritates and burns the mouth. Beware this tree!

14: Green heart (Warburgia Ugandensis). A large evergreen, also called Pepper-bark tree. It’s got spicy leaves, which are sometimes used in curries as a chilli substitute. The resin can be used as glue, and the wood makes great timber for building things, but tends to get eaten by termites. As traditional medicine an infusion of bark and roots helps cure stomachache, toothache, fever, colds, malaria and general muscular pains. The bark, when powdered and taken in small quantities also helps deal with most of the above. The roots are also good for plugging diarrhoea (not literally), while another mix of the bark and leaves cures malaria (with the small side-effect of causing violent vomiting). It’s even got edible seeds – try some on your salad!

15. Avocado (Persia Americana). Tried to grow one of these in my bedroom as a kid – it never got bigger than about 50cm. There are a few in the garden and they can get up to 10m! They get lots of flowers but only 1 in 5000 turns into a fruit.

The fruit is full of protein and vitamins – we just had this one in our salad. Melted in the mouth.

Trees in my Garden 1

1. Pigeon Wood (Triema Orientalis). Indigenous. Good for coughs, pneumonia, bronchitis, and as an antidote for poisoning. Pretty good for attracting pigeons, doves and butterflies. Wood good for poles and fuel. Leaves make handy mulch and fodder as well as brown dye. Bark makes black dye. Looks OK, functional, but unspectacular.

2. Mexican Cypress (Cupressus Lusitanica). Exotic, native to Mexico and Guatemala. High altitude evergreen conifer tree. Good for furniture, construction wood, fuel, poles, posts and pulp-wood. Not bad as a hedge or shade tree. Just doesn’t belong in Kenya…

Here are its seed cones.

3. Rose Apple (Eugenia Jambos). Exotic, native to India and Malaysia. Quite a small ornamental tree, with funny little fruit that turn yellow when ripe and with pinky green dense leaves.

The mini-apple fruit smells like a rose, hence the name, and you can make jelly and jam out of it! Wine?

4. Mango (Mangifera Indica). Well, everyone knows what a mango is. But did you know the flowers have pyramidal heads and are pollinated by flies and other insects? The ripe fruit come in various shapes and colours too, from round and yellow to oval and orangey pink. And if you ever get bored of the fruit you can make a canoe out of the wood. The wonderful world of the mango.

5: Bottle Brush. From down-under. It’s main feature is its bright red flowers, shaped like, yes … bottle brushes! The sunbirds and the bees love them. Why wouldn’t you? When the seasons right, I’ll put in a picture of it in flower, but for now here’s how it looks.