October 24, 2007, 07:45
Tourists are flooding into the city of East London to see an ancient tree that grows nowhere else. The Umtiza Tree was discovered by the same person who recongised the famous prehistoric coelacanth fish way back in 1938, the late East London Museum curator Margery Courtnay-Latimer.
Umtiza listeriana - the common name is the same as its scientific name, which is taken from the Xhosa name. It is the only tree for which the scientific name is the same as the indigenous name. Characteristics are the fluted trunk, small branches coming off main stem near the base, thorns and small compound leaves.
Just a few metres along the Dassie Trail in the Umtiza Reserve you come across the Umtiza Tree, endemic to East London and has no close relatives in southern Africa. The Umtiza gets small cream flowers and the trees can be covered with flowers. This is most often in February or March. They have a sweet scent and attract bees. Fruit consists of flat pods which split to release the seeds. It has not been established whether umtizas have a good seed crop regularly, or if they have a profuse seed crop only rarely. Seeds are eaten by monkeys.
Eco-tourism draw card
Grown from seed, the trees can take up to 10 years to mature. Mary Cole, a natural scientist at the East London Museum says most of the population is concentrated in the Umtiza Nature Reserve which falls under the Eastern Cape Parks Board, although it is not officially protected on the natural forestry list. Experts would like to see the tree make the endangered species list as it has become an eco-tourism draw card with its unique fluted trunk, small branches coming off a main stem near the base, thorns and small compound leaves.
It is the only species in this genus (Umtiza). There are small populations in the river valleys of many of the rivers between the Buffalo and the Kei, and also on the other side of the Kei River, as far east as the Kentani district. Other important tree species in the Umtiza Nature Reserve are boxwood, sneezewood, and white milkwood and cycads Encephalartos altensteinii and Encephalartos villosus. Rare mammals include the Samango monkey.
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