5 plants worth knowing
Eswatini
Eswatini is a small kingdom with a surprisingly varied landscape: in the west rises the cool, grassy highveld with extensive pine plantations, through the middle runs the hilly middleveld, and in the east lies the hot lowveld with savanna, acacias and sugarcane fields, closed off by the plateau of the Lubombo Mountains with its dry forests and cycads.
Hover over a plant to see on the map where it grows.
where it grows
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1
Marula
Sclerocarya birrea
Women brew buganu from marula fruit – a beer whose first pots are presented to the King at the marula festival.
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2
Common reed
Phragmites australis
Every year thousands of girls bring reeds to the Queen Mother – they gave their name to Umhlanga, Eswatini’s most famous ceremony.
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3
Sugarcane
Saccharum officinarum
A green sea of sugarcane in the irrigated lowveld is the largest branch of Eswatini’s economy.
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4
Mountain aloe
Aloe marlothii
In midwinter the stony hills of Eswatini are dotted with hundreds of aloes bearing horizontal orange flower spikes.
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5
Umbeluzi cycad
Encephalartos umbeluziensis
This ancient cycad, named after the Mbuluzi (Umbeluzi) River, grows only in the Lubombo Mountains on the border of Eswatini and Mozambique.
Eswatini on other Ominuvo maps
- World in NumbersPopulation: 1.3 million (2025)Source: World Bank – WDI: UN World Population Prospects (CC BY 4.0)
- Languages of the worldEnglish, Swati · official languagesSource: Unicode CLDR (Unicode License v3)
- Prices around the worldSwazi lilangeni (SZL)Source: ISO 4217
- Time zones mapUTC+2Source: IANA tz database (public domain)
- Plugs and sockets of the worldType M · 230 V · 50 Hz
- National dishes of the world2 national dishes