Searsia burchellii of another leaf colour

The leaves of Searsia burchellii (SA Tree No. 379) show colour variations from this yellow-green hue to blue-green, apart from the much reported olive green. The colouring seen here may reflect stress and may become greener after rain. 

The Karoo kuni-bush, as it is locally known, has small leaves if it grows high up on the arid hills and mountain slopes. Its more comfortable bigger leaved relatives living by the watercourses down the hills don’t have to conserve moisture with as much care. They can afford more food provision from the additional foliage. 

Nature does not care about equality or a Gini Index. It is concerned with continuation of life right now. Specimens serve, are sacrificed for the continuation of their species, the becoming, gradual transformation or evolution of emerging and disappearing entities.

Species without threats and enemies, initially hugely successful, become slack and defenceless from easy life. Unused armoury falls into disuse and is gradually lost. Weakness and threat appear as enemies develop from easy opportunities, unused resources on offer. Strong enemies may overcome and exterminate for a time, becoming the next weak party in the sequence once their food or other supports have disappeared. For every wave reaches the shore, every journey runs out of road, every species runs out of resources.

Opportunities for underdog species come from most changes. Fairness is a human attribute, refined in several forms in different cultures, lauded and condemned in different strands of civilisation. Whether ethics contributes to survival could lead to stimulating debate, probably without definitive outcome.

Survival, the focus of all non-human species (at present), is not hampered by concerns of fairness or ethics. Life is about lasting until procreation, the setting of seed, the seeing off of offspring; an event unaccompanied by thought or tear, although significant in the bigger scheme of nature.

Survival is about hanging in beyond the immediate present, not for as long as possible but definitely for the next challenge. One more season, one day or breath, until this baby is independent, this winter or summer is survived. Should more offspring come along, it or they will be seen through without hesitation, doing whatever it takes. Not an issue yet, for we are finite, confined to the present.

The present is unaffected by weird notions or ideas, least of all something like future. Forever doesnt come into it at all. Death simply has to be averted right now. Eternity is irrelevant, a non-issue in life, a mere abstraction that tortures certain thinking beings, people and what not.

The leaf of the Karoo kuni-bush has a 1 cm petiole, i.e. the stalk of the trifoliolate unit, while the three leaflets comprising the leaf blade have no petiolules; i.e. they are sessile. Leaf margins may show some undulations as do those in the photo. The intricately branched stems show lenticels on the surface and sometimes have spines as well.

The shrub grows in arid, challenging inland terrain in the central and western regions of South Africa. The shrub also occurs in the south-western parts of Namibia, away from the coast; an equally harsh climate (Shearing and van Heerden, 2008; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; Coates Palgrave, 2002).