Senegalia polyacantha colours and names

Few scattered thorns or prickles, hooked and dark, are visible on the thicker, creamy yellow to grey-brown Senegalia polyacantha stems in picture. None of them is really white as the tree’s common name, white thorn, suggests.

The tree’s other name, white-stem thorn, does not work in exact terms either. Bigger, dull yellow flakes higher up become replaced by smaller, firmer surface bark pieces lower down as the covering ages. In this way particular bark texture parts move up the tree into younger branches and keep representing all the developmental stages of bark on stems concurrently in the same tree. Nowhere is the bark exactly white, but pale, yes.

There is an Afrikaans saying: “n Goeie begrip het ‘n halwe woord nodig” meaning a good understanding requires half a word. The ingenuity of people finding names for things can be sharp, apt or inspired. Effective is not always accurate, in other words it’s not only half a word that does the trick, even the well-chosen, incorrect one may come out on top.

Remember Mark Twain though: “The author shall use the right word, not its second cousin.” And the American judge, Learned Hand, who said: “Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment.”

Young twig colouring in the photo is quite varied, from green to grey plus some hues not properly fitting between those two. The stem shades on show are increased in number on account of the drying of smaller branches; only few are destined to last and become major. There are always small parts dying in every long-living tree. They may linger, disappearing gradually.