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Updated: June 11, 2025
Having watered the cattle at a well called Lobotani, about N.W. of Bamangwato, we next proceeded to a real Kalahari fountain, called Serotli. The country around is covered with bushes and trees of a kind of leguminosae, with lilac flowers. The soil is soft white sand, very trying to the strength of the oxen, as the wheels sink into it over the felloes and drag heavily.
It deserves notice that certain orders were far more injured than others: nine Leguminosae were tried, and, with one exception, they resisted the salt-water badly; seven species of the allied orders, Hydrophyllaceae and Polemoniaceae, were all killed by a month's immersion.
There grows upon the deserts and the cattle ranges of the Rockies a plant of the leguminosae family, with a purple blossom, which is called the 'loco'. It is sweet to the taste; horses and cattle are fond of it, and when they have once eaten it they prefer it to anything else, and often refuse other food. But the plant is poisonous, or, rather, to speak exactly, it is a weed of insanity.
To the first of these groups belong many natural orders, of which the most prominent are Leguminosae, ivies, hydrangea, vines, Pothos, etc. The inosculating ones are almost all figs and Wightia: the latter is the most remarkable, and I add a cut of its grasping roots, sketched at our encampment.
Plants of the same species, placed in water impregnated with these excrements, were impeded in their growth, and faded prematurely; whilst, on the contrary, corn-plants grew vigorously in it, and the color of the water diminished sensibly, so that it appeared as if a certain quantity of the excrements of the Leguminosae had really been absorbed by the corn-plants."
The absence of Leguminosae was most remarkable, and the most prominent botanical feature in the vegetation of this region: it is too high for the tropical tribes of the warmer elevations, too low for the Alpines, and probably too moist for those of temperate regions; cool, equable, humid climates being generally unfavourable to that order. Clematis was rare, and other Ranunculaceae still more so.
Now we pass through a magnificent forest of the beautiful fan-palm the miriti overshadowing many smaller trees and innumerable shrubs, bearing light conspicuous flowers. Among them are numerous Leguminosae one of the most striking, the fava, having a colossal pod.
Swiggs's ears with such learned terms as "Boraginiae," "Cucurbitaceae," "Leguminosae," and as winter drew in, master and man would hold long consultations indoors over certain plants, the portraits of which in the herbals seemed familiar enough, though their habitats often proved, on further reading, to lie no nearer than Arabia Felix or the Spice Islands.
The flora is scanty, and belongs, with but few exceptions, to the Leguminosae. Several varieties of antelopes roam over the desert. Partridges, pigeons, and several species of the Natatores at certain seasons, arrive in great numbers.
We occasionally, though rarely, see something of the same kind in plants; thus the first leaves of the ulex or furze, and the first leaves of the phyllodineous acacias, are pinnate or divided like the ordinary leaves of the leguminosae.
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