SPECIAL MILKWOOD TREES : Sideroxylon inerme

How does one describe trees?  They are a necessary aid to a clean environment, human beings and animals find them both familiar and useful. Their fruit forms part of the food humans and animals eat, they offer shade and relief from the sun. They enhance the landscape.  The following are very specific trees that have each played a role in human lives.

MILKWOOD TREES KOMMETJIE

The milkwood trees, Sideroxylon inerme,  that are to be seen at Kommetjie, Cape Peninsula close to the Atlantic Ocean, are flourishing and have obviously been well looked after by the local authorities and are certainly not the smallish to medium in size and rather twisted trees, seen some years back. The thickets in this neighbourhood produce white flowers and purplish black fruit. No milkwood can be cut down or trimmed, without a permit from the relevant authorities.  In other words they are protected trees. Growth patterns are along the coast, from the Cape Peninsula to Mozambique.  Sometimes they do grow inland and will reach a shape called “umbrella like”.

Four of these milkwoods have been proclaimed national monuments and form part of South African history.  The term national monuments has been used above because that was previously the correct terminology.  Today the term is  provincial heritage sites.

From around the late 1490s or early 1500 when the captains of Portuguese ships sailing along the South African coast needed to get information to their masters back home,  they  are said to have hung a shoe on a milkwood tree in which they left messages.  That tree, thought to be 600 years old, now known as the Post Office Tree  is within the town of Mossel Bay.    It was classed a national monument on 9 September 1938.  This form of early coastal postal deliveries would also include inscribed  padroes – “a pillar surmounted by a cross” - as well as messages inscribed on stone and would  be used  as well, in later years,  by the captains in charge of  British and Netherlands ships.                                                                                                            

 The Treaty Tree,  in the Cape Town suburb of Woodstock,  became  a part of history after the Battle of Blaauwberg 6-8 January 1806 when General Jannsens on behalf of the Batavian Republic signed the articles of capitulation.to the British. The handing over ceremony may have taken place in a small house (now no long in existence) close by with the signing, on the 18^th January 1806, under a milkwood tree. National monument status came about on 26 May 1967.  This tree was recently inspected and it too has been cared for and shows off an umbrella like shape. It is to be found at the corner of Treaty Road and Spring Street off Albert Road, Woodstock.  In 1806 the area would have had a clear view of the sea, today it is in a very built up industrial area.  As a matter of interest the tree is within an enclosed parking area of a commercial building.  However, the immediate ground around it has been  attractively landscaped.  Sadly though the plaque indicating its history has been stolen.

TREATY TREE WOODSTOCK

The third National Monument is the Fingo Milkwood Tree near Peddie in the Eastern Cape. It also has monument status. In 1834 several hundred Mfengu arrived near the British camp at Butterworth asking for protection.  This was agreed to and because of this act,  their loyalty to the British king was affirmed, in 1835, under this particular tree.  Back in the Western Cape in the Bredasdorp district and near the farm Rhenosterfontein is a milkwood tree possibly a thousand years old.  It too was granted national monument status on17 December 1993,  because of its age and size. The girth of its trunk has been stated to be  over 3 meters and its crown over 20 meters.  From a photograph seen, it too has an umbrella shaped crown.       

These four trees have been selected to reflect aspects of the past but which have a bearing on the present.

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