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Easily propagated, great

news for budget gardeners.

more interesting facts:
• Spekboom plants are said to be
able to live around 200 years and
can grow up to five metres tall.
• The taste of the leaves can
change depending on the time
of day as the sun rises and sets.
• The creators of The Great
Labyrinth of Africa in klapmuts
aim to create a spekboom
plantation so large that it can
be seen from outer space.
• A man with the name
Abraham Enzo van Vuuren, an
A powerful tool in the fight against climate change environmental activist who
and the move towards a zero-carbon world. cycles all over the country to
raise environmental awareness,
carries a baby spekboom in
stick it in the ground. Give it a little of the air we breathe at an astonishing a vial around his neck.
water* every few days and you’ll rate. It has been established that this • Spekboom plants are very easy-
soon have a new spekboom plant superior succulent can absorb between to-grow plants. They enjoy plenty
of your own. (*Make sure you don’t four to ten tonnes of carbon per hectare of sunlight and can thrive equally
give it too much water or it will rot.) to make plant tissue and produce as a bonsai tree, in a pretty pot,
oxygen, even after the sun sets. The or in the ground as a hedge.
The REAL deal about plant stores solar energy to perform • With all its amazing medicinal
spekboom photosynthesis at night, making a properties, one wonders if there
All items listed here are fantastic reasons spekboom thicket ten times more shouldn’t be some research
to love this plant, but the main reason effective at carbon fixing per hectare into the spekboom plant in the
why the spekboom is heralded as than a tropical rainforest! Excess carbon global challenge of finding a cure
south Africa’s miracle plant, enjoying in the atmosphere is responsible for or a therapy for the COVID-19
unprecedented plant popularity in the global warming, so the more carbon we virus! some food for thought.
press and on social media, is its ability can remove from the air and return to
to remove carbon dioxide from the the ground, the better. If you put this source: Garden & Home, with input from
Michelle Burger
atmosphere and improve the quality into perspective, it is truly amazing.

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