A close-up of the Whilstling Acacia golf ball sized 'pods' & the long, spiky thorns which protrude from them !
These Whistling Acacia's can be found in abundance at the entrance to our farm
Thorn trees are very much a part of the African landscape, no matter where in Africa you travel. There are so many different varieties, each one of them beautiful in it’s own right. Many African bush and sunset scenes which you see in travel magazines and on postcards etc, usually have a silhouetted thorn tree at sunset somewhere in/on them - they are a true symbol of Africa !
Dried thorn branches are gathered & used by the local Maasai tribe here to form fences to enclose their livestock at night – they are very effective, too ! Thorn trees also provide homes & food to bird and insect life and a source of shade. (Oh yes - some of them with their long, thick needle-like thorns also provide ideal tyre puncturing material, too !)
We have several different varieties of thorn trees on the farm, but the one which I really wanted to tell you about is the “Whistling Acacia” tree, which I think is one of the more interesting thorn trees. We have these in abundance here, the majority of them are at the entrance to the farm (as the rest have been cleared to make way for crops).
Now, I’m sure that you are wondering why they are called “Whistling Acacia”? Well, each tree (they are mostly short, stubby bush-like trees) has several short thorns running along each branch, as well as longer thorns (around 7 cm/3 inches in length) which protrude out of individual hollow, bulbous “pods” which are also found dotted along the branches. (I call them pods but they are not actually pods as such).
These ‘pods’ (which are about the size of a golf ball) appear all over the tree and there are stinging ants which make their homes inside these pods by making small holes all over the pods so that they can get inside. When the pods are empty and the wind blows, the tree makes a whistling sound as the wind blows through the hundreds of holes (imagine a ‘forest’ of these trees on a windy day !), hence the name “Whistling Acacia”.
It is thought that the reason why the ants choose to live in the thorn tree “pods” instead of on land, is because the trees are usually found in places where the soil is either dry & cracked during the dry season, or very spongy during the rainy season – so it makes better sense for the ants to live in the “pods”. In return for a home in the tree, the ants reciprocate by swarming and stinging any intruders that drop by (like a poor impala or giraffe) looking for a leafy snack !
Isn’t nature wonderful ?!
