Image of the Day: The Fever Trees of Zimbabwe

By Bruce G. Marcot, Ecology Picture of the Week:

Here are trees of myth and stories.  We are in the lowland swamps of a remote corner of southern Zimbabwe, Africa, along the "great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees," as Kipling wrote.  But why are these smooth-barked, greenish-yellow trees named "fever trees?"  Do they have a temperature?  Do they cause fever?

Actually, it is a good tale of how correlation and causation sometimes get intermixed.  Fever trees grow well in wet soil along river banks and swampy areas, which also are prime habitat for the malaria-carrying mosquitoes of the region which do cause fever.  Settlers of the region associated the trees with the ailment, and thus was born their name.

Fever trees provide more than fevers.  The tree is browsed by large mammals and game animals, and the firm wood can be used for timber.  The bark has medicinal value and the tree is sometimes even planted as an ornamental.

--Bruce G. Marcot

Image and text © Bruce G. Marcot, Ph.D. Research Wildlife Ecologist,
who produces the Ecology Picture of the Week website.