It’s amazing how much a small, round, sweet and nutritious fruit can control South Africa at this time of the year. If you have the opportunity to travel around some of the more rural communities you will see many South Africans gathering and sharing the taste of Marula beer from this wild fruit. But as popular as this fruit is for people animals too are drawn to its sweetness. Animals include squirrels, antelope, baboons and vervet monkeys and most commonly the elephant. Antelope wait patiently underneath the trees as the monkeys and baboons drop fruit from above. The elephant push over huge Marula trees to get to these nutritional fruit at the top and tend to move great distances across the reserve and the move from tree to tree.
If the lion is titled the KING of the bush, the Marula is most definitely the QUEEN.

Nelson – Kapama River Lodge
22/02/2012