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If you plant one tree for butterflies in South Africa, plant this one. Wild Peach is the main larval food plant of the Garden Acraea, Acraea horta, the small orange butterfly with black spots that drifts through gardens across the country. In a good year the caterpillars will eat a tree completely bare.
This alarms people. It should not. The tree re-leafs within weeks, the caterpillars pupate and hang their translucent chrysalises under every nearby windowsill and gutter, and the cycle starts again. Do not spray. Red-chested Cuckoos, piet-my-vrou, are among the very few birds that will eat the hairy toxin-laden caterpillars, and they arrive for exactly this reason.
The rest of the tree earns its place too. It is dioecious, so berries come only from female trees, and they are worth having. Knobbly round yellow-green capsules split open to reveal shiny black seeds coated in sticky brilliant orange-red flesh, and barbets, bulbuls, mousebirds, starlings and turacos all come for them. The leaves are dark green above and grey-hairy beneath, with small pockets in the vein angles that house mites in a quiet piece of mutual housekeeping.
There is no peach in it anywhere. The resemblance is in the leaf. The pale tough timber has been used for planks, furniture and yokes, and bark and leaves have long-standing medicinal uses, particularly for skin complaints.
Plant it in full sun or semi-shade, both of which produce a good tree. Water it moderately to establish and very little afterwards, since this is one of the more drought-tolerant forest-margin species. Prune it to shape while young and then leave it. Allow six to eight metres of space, because the crown spreads even though the roots behave themselves. Use it for restoration planting, where its speed and tolerance make it a workhorse, or in a wildlife garden, school ground or park. Warn people about the caterpillars before they appear, or you will spend every summer explaining them to your kids.
We plant Wild Peach as one of our fast-growing pioneer species at Uilenkraal, Khoinania, the Garden Route Botanical Garden Forest Plot, and our Heartland project, establishing quick canopy cover and creating the shaded, sheltered conditions slower-growing indigenous trees need to take root. Its drought tolerance and adaptability to forest-margin conditions make it a reliable early performer across a range of sites, exactly the kind of resilience we look for when selecting species for reforestation. As each forest matures around it, Wild Peach also draws in butterflies, birds, and other wildlife, helping rebuild the layered, functioning ecosystems these projects are working to restore, not just a stand of trees.
A Tree Card funds real tree planting in one of Greenpop's restoration projects. Browse our full range of designs, for any occasion, and find the right one for you.
