Regiments Of Red-coated Sentinels

Everywhere you go along the southern edges of the Karoo, a slow-blooming colour splash straddles the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, brightening every north-facing hillside with colonies of ferocious thorn-lined leaves, upright and motionless against winter’s icy winds.

- Julienne Du Toit

They stand proud in the early morning mist, like regiments of red-coated foot soldiers waiting for the call to charge.

So war-ready do they look that there are records of British soldiers shooting them to pieces where they stood in silhouette on ridges surrounding Grahamstown (recently renamed Makhanda) and along the Great Fish River. They were, according to legend, mistaken for red-blanketed Xhosa forces.

“In fact,” says Basil Mills, a fount of knowledge on wild things, Eastern Cape Frontier War battles and more, and based with the National English Literary Museum in Makhanda, “the amaXhosa have legends about the aloe warriors that spring up from the Earth by the thousand. Their spears are the flowers, their leaves are their shields, and the stems are their bodies.”

Adding to the illusion is the fact that Aloe ferox are generally single-stemmed and a little taller than a human, although they can grow four metres high. But their only weapons are the hooked, spiky thorns edging gracefully along recurved leaves, the reason they were named ferox.

Come the cold months, Aloe ferox plants that have been on summertime guard duty send up candelabra-like branches with tightly packed cylinders full of sweetness. These inflorescences turn from green to chilli red in a matter of weeks. Then, from the bottom to the top, the flowery minarets ripen, the stamens spill out, and the nectar bar is open. Bees and sunbirds fuss over them, greedy for their sweet nectar. Monkeys scamper about, picking the flowers. The reddish pollen sometimes leaves telltale lipstick stains on their furtive little faces.