Terminalia sericea giving shade to an elephant

There is peace around this elephant lingering under the Terminalia sericea tree in the bushveld. While it sometimes breaks the tree, people using the timber do the same and more.

The wood of T. sericea is yellow and hard, hence the sandgeelhout (sand yellow wood) common name. It is a good general purpose timber from which attractive furniture has been made.

Not quite as silver as the silver tree (Leucadendron argenteum) and the wood not quite as yellow and popular as the yellowwood tree (a few species of Podocarpus), this tree, commonly the silver cluster-leaf is an attractive tree.

The tree is valued in traditional medicine for several healing qualities and in folklore for contributions to crop success. It has to be correctly applied though, in homage to ancestral spirits at appropriate shrines. There are still those heeding the tenet that cutting down this tree causes a hailstorm (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Carr, 1974).