The National Botanical Gardens

The National Botanical Gardens at Entebbe. It wasn’t much of an entrance -- a bit of fence and a large metal gate. There were a few guys sitting by the fence and when they saw us they walked over, charged us admission, and one of them said he’d be our guide.

The Gardens are fairly old, laid out in 1898. My guidebook and Wikipedia claim that the original curator was “A Whyte” -- I can’t figure out if this is a joke. Local rumor says that these Gardens were the site where the early Tarzan movies were filmed. Looking around, it’s easy to believe.

The Gardens are laid out in regions -- temperate, tropical, etc. They are not exclusively local plants, many are not native to Uganda. We first entered what I guess was the temperate section. There was a dirt path through grasslands, with tall trees spaced out on both sides. Across the path we saw this stream of ants -- there must have been hundreds of thousands of them, following a precise wiggly path, flowing non-stop across the path. We carefully stepped over the stream, but then someone rode by on a bike and crushed a bunch of them and the others just kept going.

My uninformed guess is that these are siafu, aka safari ants, a type of army ant. Most army ants don’t form nests, instead moving constantly, but these form temporary nests. Their nests are actually made of ants -- they link arms and jaws to build walls around the queen. They hunt in massive groups and a colony can contain tens of millions of ants. They have been known to kill people, though the colony moves so slowly that they only kill the immobile. The ants themselves are blind.

When siafu travel, the larger soldier ants line the outside of the column and the smaller ants stay on the inside. Soldiers and workers are infertile females. Males grow wings and fly off fairly early in their lifespan, but upon reaching maturity are attracted to the scent of other colonies. When soldiers find a fertile male, they tear off its wings and drag it to their queen for mating.

A bite from a soldier ant is extremely painful, and they will die (and be torn in half) before releasing. Their bite is so strong that in some parts of this region they are used as emergency sutures -- locals from some tribes who get a severe cut while away from medical care will hold the skin together and get soldiers to bite, holding the wound shut, and will then tear off the ants’ bodies. This bandage can hold for days.

These are the ants that eat those Soviet soldiers in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I watched on the plane. Fortunately, not being Soviets, we had nothing to fear. We dropped a few leaves and rocks in their path and watched as they removed them. Then a guy on a bike rode by and squashed a bunch of them, but the line quickly reformed.

Anyway, we then passed this giant sprout of Golden Bamboo. Bamboo, a type of grass, can sometimes grow three feet in an hour. This bamboo didn’t seem to be doing that, but I didn‘t watch it for a whole hour so I can‘t say for sure. Maybe it all happens at the end. Golden Bamboo is native to East Asia, and is thus not food for the Golden Bamboo Lemur, which is not. Bamboo is one of the words that stop looking like real words if you look at them or say them too much.

Our guide showed us a few large holes in the path, maybe three inches long, that I assumed were gopher holes, but he said they were termite holes. I was concerned that there were three-inch termites running around, but sure enough, there were tiny regular termites crawling around on the rims of the holes.

Without interference, the holes would eventually grow into this, a fifty-year-old termite mound. These things are apparently very complicated, with water collection chambers, egg-laying areas, and tunnel systems that control the oxygen levels. They also have air conditioning -- the interior temperature might not fluctuate by more than one degree throughout the day. The walls are strong enough to damage industrial digging equipment.

Termites’ main enemy is ants, and their soldiers have jaws so large that they can’t eat -- they must be fed by workers. When ants attack the nest, the soldiers use their enormous jaws to clog up any breaches in the walls. Like army ants, most termites are blind. Some of these nests have reached thirty feet high.

Someone asked the guide why they build them, and he explained that the termites are underground, but then they hear sounds and come to the surface and then build around themselves. I chalked that up to the language barrier.

Then we passed this coffea plant, the source of coffee. I thought coffee was a short bush, but this was a large tree-like structure -- the guide explained that plantations just trim them short so the fruits are easier to harvest. Turns out they can grow to twelve feet high. We tried eating a few of the fruits, but they didn’t taste very good. Maybe because they weren't grown in the shade.

We saw a few other unusual plants and some birds. Our guide knew what they were (or at least faked it well), but I didn’t pay close attention. So this is, um, a flower. We also saw a few colobus monkeys in the trees high above us. Our guide explained that these weren’t native to the region, but had escaped from the local wildlife preserve.

He also showed us this plant, which he said has been around since dinosaur-times virtually unaltered. I don’t think he meant that this specific plant was around for that long, but there might have been a language issue. The pineapple-like thing in the plant was apparently dinosaur food, though I didn't see any bite marks.

We then turned to the jungle part of the gardens. There was a large staircase that descended into a dark tree-lined area. Along the stairs were channels filled with flowing water. At the bottom the stairs turned into a stone path that was also cut through with drainage channels.

The foliage was a lot heavier here, but it wasn’t as interesting. I guess this is what rainforest is like -- very dark, lots of water, lots of trees and plants. Perhaps this is what the area looked like before people cut the trees down.

We emerged from the jungle at shore of Lake Victoria. The trees had been cleared to leave about twenty or thirty feet of grass between the lake and the forest. There were a few people sitting on benches reading or chatting.

We walked along the waterside path and saw another colony of army ants on the move, as well as various flowers. I have no idea what this one was doing having this kind of shape, but I don’t want to meet whatever creature pollinates it.

As I mentioned above, this is allegedly the site where the Tarzan movies were made. We came to a spot with hanging vines and the guide said that if we wanted to try to swing on vines, this was the place. I wanted. Sure enough, the vines were easily strong enough to support my weight, though I’m not sure I could easily get from one vine to another even if they were conveniently located.

The path seemed to lead off to some houses, but our guide said that this was essentially the end unless we wanted to see the cinnamon tree. We definitely wanted to see the cinnamon tree, so we hiked up the hill a bit. Passed some more odd flowers.

Sure enough, this is the cinnamon tree. It looked like a regular tree, but we broke off little bits of the bark and they tasted like cinnamon. Cinnamon turns out to have been known in medieval Europe, but was very expensive -- Arab traders kept its source secret. Herodotus wrote that there were giant cinnamon birds that brought the sticks from unknown lands, and Arab traders tempted the birds with carcasses so they could steal the sticks. Turns out it’s just dried bark.

On the way back we passed this jackfruit tree. I’d had jackfruit in Asia -- it’s a subtle taste, mild and not wildly popular, though it is the largest tree fruit in the world.

We also passed some tsetse fly traps, which were large blue and black canvas affairs with nets on them. The idea is that the flies are attracted to the colors and then get trapped in the nets. This is worthwhile because these things carry sleeping sickness, a disease that kills 100% of infected people unless they receive treatment. There was an epidemic in southeast Uganda this year.

Anyway, that more or less sums up my botanical garden adventure. We tipped the guide, argued a bit when he asked for more money, and then drove around looking for a place for lunch (good job having non-existent places, Brant guide). We stopped in a small guest house and tried their restaurant, but they wanted a couple of hours to prepare anything so we just had soda. Bottle deposits are a serious thing here, they wanted the bottles back.

Then we went to the Entebbe Wildlife Preserve, here's the write-up for that.