Trees and Shrubs
The planting of useful and ornamental trees is no less than a positive duty incumbent on every householder in West Africa; they are infinitely less trouble, and give far more lasting satisfaction than flower growing; besides, even in this most selfish of all selfish countries, it behoves us all to think of those who will come after us, and not neglect to plant a mango stone because we ourselves may scarcely hope to gather fruit from the tree that will result. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I suppose that every flowering tree and shrub in Lokoja, and many in Zungeru, owes its existence to the wise labours of those ‘old hands’ who, years ago, planted out the ground around the old Preparanda with trees, from which innumerable cuttings have been obtained; at all events, I have never forgotten to feel grateful to them.
Orange and lime trees grow readily from pips, mangoes and date palms from stones, pineapples can be raised from the leafy crowns on the fruit, paw-paws spring up wherever the seeds are scattered, but they, like bananas, are not ornamental, and should be relegated to the back garden.
During the rainy season slips of flowering trees and shrubs never fail to strike; ‘frangipani’ with rosy blossoms and delicious scent, Poinciana Regia, better known as ‘flamboyant’ on account of its regal scarlet flowers, three kinds of acacias, red, yellow and white, fragrant rose-coloured oleanders, and many others, can be put in wherever your fancy dictates, and will certainly reward your patience—usually by endeavouring to flower before putting out a single leaf!
There is a delightful, sweet-scented golden allamanda, growing in sturdy bushes, and forming an ideal hedge, as it is loaded with blossom for more than half the year. Another somewhat similar flower is Thevetia, which sows itself pertinaciously from its poisonous seeds, and Tabernaemontana is another most decorative shrubby plant, with shining dark foliage, and a flower resembling a gardenia.
Nigeria abounds in indigenous blossoming trees and creepers, all beautiful, and mostly sweet-scented, from the gorgeous Spathodea Nilotica, Erythrina and Kigelia Africana downwards; indeed, no one who travels about with open eyes can fail to acquire enough seeds, pods and stones to plant acres with beauty and fragrance; day after day, on the march, I have filled my pockets.
The bush, too, is full of flowers well worth cultivating, as I have before remarked. There are creepers and climbing plants innumerable, including Mussaenda elegans, bearing handsome flame-coloured blossoms, crimson Caconia paniculata, Strophanthus with its fantastic, trailing creamy petals, delicate asparagus fern, and Landolphia owariensis (the rubber vine), queen of climbers, a sheet of snow-white, intensely fragrant flowers. And if Landolphia is the queen of climbers, surely the king is a gorgeous apricot-hued Gloriosa Superba, which fastens its delicate persistent tendrils round every available support, and when the flowering season is over is beautiful still with bursting pods full of scarlet seeds. In the forest, beside the river one finds clerodendron, bryophyllum, quisqualis, and a thousand others; indeed, I only wish I had enough botanical knowledge to name half the native flowers and trees I have raised from seed collected casually on the march.
The Verandah Garden
Perhaps the verandah garden is one’s dearest and closest interest; wise people may shake their heads, and mutter about the number of mosquitoes attracted by the watering of ferns and flowers, but, after all, when there are at least two millions of mosquitoes about, a thousand more or less makes very little difference, and I am certain no Englishwoman in Africa will forgo her verandah garden for so trifling a reason!