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

  1. Marula 1

    tree

    Marula

    Sclerocarya birrea

    Women brew buganu from marula fruit – a beer whose first pots are presented to the King at the marula festival.

  2. Common reed 2

    grass · The reed of the Umhlanga ceremony – the Reed Dance

    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.

  3. Sugarcane 3

    crop

    Sugarcane

    Saccharum officinarum

    A green sea of sugarcane in the irrigated lowveld is the largest branch of Eswatini’s economy.

  4. Mountain aloe 4

    succulent

    Mountain aloe

    Aloe marlothii

    In midwinter the stony hills of Eswatini are dotted with hundreds of aloes bearing horizontal orange flower spikes.

  5. Umbeluzi cycad 5

    tree

    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.