Broad-leaf Coral Trees South Africa

Erythrina latissima, English: Broad-leaf coral tree, Afrikaans: Breeblaarkoraalboom, Zulu: Mokhupye

A pretty and most unusual of the South African Erythrina species, with a chunky bark giving a rugged cork looking texture. Does not grow exceptionally fast, reaching a maximum of 8 meters tall, living to reach quite a good old age.

Flowers dripping dazzling coral red at the top of the tree, with a wasp sitting enjoying the nectar, older trees are not affected by wasps whilst young trees planted this would need to be watched, along with wood borer. Flowers appear at the end of winter between June to August, these photo's were taken a few months ago on a walk in the park.

Aptly named a broad-leaf, leaves on the fully grown tree the size of small dinner plates, losing leaves during winter showing display of flowers, fresh light green leaves develop going into spring becoming darker green slightly gray in colour with age. Summer the broad-leaf coral tree offers a lot of shade with leaves fully developed.

Flowers are replaced with seed pods, bright red seeds in pods of up to three hundred millimeters long, each seed marked with a black dot, commonly known as lucky beans, used in decorative necklaces which some believe ward off evil spirits.

Bark of the tree looks like cork, broad-leaf coral tree is relatively slow growing taking 20 to 30 years to form a reasonable canopy, living over 100 years, before falling over which they tend to do (similar to us, too old... fall down)!

So to get really up close and personal with this tree, reaching for the sky one can see the deep groves of the bark from a different angle. This bark is burned and pounded into powder which is used to dress wounds, when branches fall down barbets and woodpeckers hollow out nests for their young. Each tree in life serves more than one purpose.