Botswana Travel Guide
Botswana Travel Guide
>
Okavango Private Reserves
>
Pom Pom, Kanana & Nxabega
>
>
Flora
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Botswana Travel Guide

Flora



The NG27 concession is in the heart of the Delta and contains most of the environments that are to be found in the Delta. Everywhere you’ll find thickets and stands of riverine forest, more open areas of invasive bushes, and occasional floodplains.
The area around Pom Pom is very open and pretty, notable for many tiny islands amidst wide open floodplains, which are often submerged between May and September. These distinct islands are often covered, or at least fringed, by real fan (Hyphaene petersiana) and wild date palms (Phoenix reclinata), and between them are large marshy floodplains. There are quite a few baobabs in the area, and the forest patches here are fairly sparse.
Moving northeast to the area of Kanana, there are less of the flat, open plains and more areas colonised by expanses of wild sage. Around these are larger islands and woodland patches with plenty of the Delta’s usual riverine tree species – sausage trees, Kigelia africana, jackalberries, Diospyros mespiliformis, knobthorns, Acacia nigrescens, the occasional marula, Sclerocarya birrea caffra, and the odd raintree, Lonchocarpus capassa. (Also sometimes called the appleleaf, the raintree gets it name from the droplets which are secreted by froghopper insects as they suck the sap from the leaves. This keeps the soil beneath the tree moist, and in exceptional cases can even form pools.)
Further northwest, around Nxabega, the forests become more in evidence with large, dense lines of broadleaf forests and patches of acacia. Mixed with these are a few open plains, fringed by real fan palms (Hyphaene petersiana) and stands of riverine trees. In the midst of the larger floodplains you’ll see occasional islands crowned with an African mangosteen, Garcinia livingstonei, or perhaps a large sycamore fig, Ficus sycomorus, growing out of an old termite mound perhaps surrounded by a few russet bush-willow bushes, Combretum hereroense. Some of the Nxabega’s floodplains have thick coverings of hippo grass (Vossia cuspidata) that turn a lovely shade of orange-red around September.


^ Top of page