Two immense Southern African trees iconic to different regions are landmarks at two long-standing schools.
Durban High School has a massive baobab on its grounds ‒ a species more linked to Zimbabwe than KZN.
Nearly 1 700km up the N3 and later the A4, in Harare, at an institution called Prince Edward that is much the equivalent of DHS, a Natal mahogany, or mKhuhlu, graces the grounds.
Their stories are included in two different books, Where the Baobab Grows at Durban High School, about DHS’s history, by Jeremy Oddy, and the other in Tree Tales of Zimbabwe, launched recently by Harare-based author Jonathan Waters.
Oddy told the story of the baobab: a local resident gave one of two saplings she had grown in paint tins to legendary teacher Bill Payn.
One evening after a rugby match against Maritzburg College, Payn and two other teachers, Vic Pellew and AA Bear, decided to plant it in the grounds.
Oddy stressed that the tree ‒ like Payn, who was a Springbok rugby player ‒ was “big and strong”.
Last weekend, Waters released his book, including Prince Edward’s Natal mahogany, which was planted in July 1925 by the Prince of Wales.
The school was then called Salisbury Boys’ High but was renamed Prince Edward after the tour by the Prince of Wales that year.
“It is exactly the right kind of tree to plant for longevity. We don’t really know how long they live. It’s certainly 300 plus years,” Waters told the Independent on Saturday.
On the page opposite the one featuring Prince Edwards’ Natal mahogany is a picture of Queen Elizabeth II on visit to the school during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Harare in 1991.
“She’s there with education minister Fay Chung, planting an acacia.”
Prince Edward is probably the best-known government school in Harare, said Waters.
His book documents 75 trees around Zimbabwe, several of them at schools, and stories about local history and people associated with them.
He attended Prince Edward himself and passed by the tree at the entrance to the school’s Beit Hall every day.
“It had the plaque on the front and everybody knew what it was. But perhaps the tree with the most significance was an African tulip from Uganda. In that tree hung a piece of railway line. The Form Twos used to have to go there with a piece of iron and bang it to announce the changes between periods.”
In spite of DHS’s baobab being one of only a handful in Durban, Waters is not surprised by its presence.
“They can grow anywhere in Africa. The average rule is that they grow by two and a half centimetres a year and several in Zimbabwe have been measured over the years.
“I know of four in one garden, possibly from the same tree, but that have had four entirely different growing experiences within five metres of one another.
“We don’t know enough about them.”
- Tree Tales of Africa
The Independent on Saturday