Planting DesignDiscover the right plants for your garden.
exposure by : Parinari capensis , Bart Wursten .
In South Africa ’s coastal grassland , to search a forest is to walk along its canopy - indeed , it ’s the only way to observe an extraordinary grouping of so - called underground trees , where only the uppermost leaves and branch are visible . The repose of the tree diagram is submerged below the mysterious sandy land , creating a clonal internet of underground " wood . " By all appearance , the forests are merely low shrubs , which presents the philosophic riddle : if a tree falls and no one canseethe timberland , what of the forest ? In these underground timber , however , the trees do n’t fall - that is their adaptive splendor . Tucked away and protected from so many environmental threat , they underground woodland are look at all but immortal , with estimated age of 13,000 eld or more .
Not rare in the African savannah , but scarcely found elsewhere in the earth , the curious plants are cognise as pyrogenetic geoxylic suffrutices ( or , suffrutex ) , explains Professor Braam van Wyk , plant taxonomist from the University of Pretoria . " [ These ] woody flora can be compared to underground tree , and all that you see are green twigs , which can be compared with a canopy of the tree diagram . A whole orbit may be one plant life , and it ’s the canopy that just sticks out , the hint of the branches above ground . " Having germinate in a dry landscape where plants are devoured by grazing animals and bushfire , these underground trees have a significant vantage . By shifting the legal age of its trunk below primer , a subshrub tree diagram is mostly impervious to above - earth selection pressures . " These tips may burn down every year , but the rest of the tree stays untouched underground , " says van Wyk . " They are essentially immortal ; nothing can wipe out them , except for habitat destruction . Grazers can not kill them , fire can not kill them , and they are drought resistant . "
South Africa ’s Highveld region is place to Erythrina zeyheri ( called " Ploegbreker , " or “ plough breaker ” ) , a type of clandestine coral tree . Here , a colony of Erythrina zeyheri regenerates after a grass fire . Photo by : Thabo Maphisa .
Reproducing underground by branching roots and base , the perennial canopy egress only in the spring . The above - ground growth will kick the bucket after a wintertime frost or summer fire , meanwhile the underground tree spread wider and panoptic . The trees are believed to be the oldest plants in southern Africa , and the only scourge to their longevity would be an introduce pathogen - as the underground forests are clonal trees , they miss the genetic diversity to defend the species against unexampled disease .
Anna Laurent is a author and producer of educational botanic medium . Photographs from her forthcoming subject area guide to Los Angeles are useable for exhibition and leverage at theauthor ’s store .
