One of the highlights of our stay at Mopane Bush Lodge in July was the morning walk with the Lodge Manager, Andrew Rae, an incredibly knowledgable and personable ranger. He shared all kinds of facts and tidbits about the bushveld animal and plant life.
I was particularly struck by two stories he told us about plants. 
Near the Limpopo River live the Fever trees - just as Rudyard Kipling wrote about. Earlier in our trip we had gone to the Treetop Walk on the Limpopo River at Mapungubwe National Park and I noticed that there were these big, yellow barked trees each with one big black limb - how strange I thought. Turns out that the ground water near the Limpopo contains a lot of salt - but since these poor trees can't really rely on some factory filtering their water for them, they have no choice but to drink it up. Smart things that they are, they funnel all the salts into one sacrificial limb so the rest of the tree can enjoy pure non-salty water. Clever, huh?
The second even more amazing thing Andrew told us about are these acacia bushes with huge thorns. Apparently, the leaves of these bushes are especially delicious to giraffe and eland. You'd think the thorns would be all the defense the bushes would need, but the giraffe and eland use their long tongues to weave past the thorns to get at the tender delicious leaves. The wily acacia then employs its second defense. As soon as it senses its leaves are being devoured it emits a tannin into its leaves making them much less tasty. Within 5 minutes the giraffe is on its way. I think this is wonderous- but it doesn't end there. The bush also emits a chemical into the air which gets picked up by neighboring downwind acacias letting them know evil leaf eating beasts are about. By the time the unknowing giraffe wanders to a nearby acacia, the leaves are already filled with tannins. But giraffes are no dummies - they have learned to go upwind to find the next acacia. Oh cruel nature!!
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