MyKrugerHoliday
Fever tree
Koorsboom · Vachellia xanthophloea
The fever tree is the ghostly yellow-green acacia of pans and floodplains, a striking sight where it forms pure stands. Early settlers wrongly blamed the tree for the malarial fevers of the swampy ground it grows in.
Log your Fever tree sighting — free →How to identify it
The standout is the smooth, powdery lime-green to yellow bark on the trunk and branches, which almost glows. A thorny flat-topped acacia, usually growing in dense stands in low, wet ground; sweet-scented yellow pom-pom flowers in spring.
Flowers & fruit
Sweetly scented golden pom-pom flowers in spring (roughly August–November).
Browsed by
Elephant eat the young branches and leaves; giraffe and vervet monkeys eat the leaves and pods; monkeys and grey go-away-birds (louries) also eat the flowers; bees work the scented blooms.
Where to see it in Kruger
Mainly the far north on floodplains, pans and river margins (notably the Luvuvhu and Limpopo systems around Pafuri), plus scattered low-lying wet depressions where groundwater collects.
Did you know
The name is a case of mistaken identity: the fevers came from mosquitoes in the same wet, low-lying ground the tree favours, not from the tree itself.
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