African Wildlife Environment Issue 75 FINAL

Oncoba spinosa fruit

is not the time when I let you into my new tree-world discoveries. That I will save for a later date, when I can tease you with letting out bits and pieces of information to tantalise you tree buffs! What I do want to share with you today, is a new book, that hopefully will be published in the next year or so, that has taken the artist/author more than 38 years to complete. This is a book where a fruiting twig of 381 of our more common South African trees have been meticulously illustrated by one Trevor Ankiewicz – a Saasveld forestry graduate, registered Nature Guide, and wonderfully charming human being. I learned about his book when he was our local guide on a ‘Big 5 Tree Tour’ of southern Africa last year, when Dr Ernst van Jaarsveld and I led a small group from the International Dendrological Society. To give you a taste of what is to come in Trevor’s book, the illustration I have chosen is Oncoba spinosa - the Snuff-box tree (sometimes called the African dog-rose). For each species he has drawn a twig with a few leaves and a fruit attached and one on the

ground below as well as a few individual seeds. As such his book is unique as most tree books do not have good illustrations of fruits! Needless to say, Ernst and I were very impressed by Trevor’s work and I promised to assist with finding the funds for the publication once completed. That work is now done, and soon we will be calling for financial support (since the book will have limited appeal, just tree enthusiasts, and as such funds will be needed to underwrite the costs) from my contacts and those likely to assist.

Prof Eugene Moll Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology University of the Western Cape emoll@telkomsa.net

21 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 75 (2020)