Saving The Maerua

I WOULD like to praise the person responsible for saving the lonely Maerua tree as well as the Acacia a little further on amidst the roadworks going on in Jan Jonker Road close to Maerua Mall.

I sincerely hope that this tree will be preserved and integrated in the final layout of this area.Maerua schinzii or the Ringwood tree is endemic to Namibia – it occurs nowhere else but in our country. It is also the tree for which Maerua Mall was named, for on the site which is now covered by this shopping mall there used to be a beautiful grove of these trees around a little spring/seepage. It is a great pity the developers of the Mall did not initially incorporate this unique piece of natural beauty into the Mall.A member of the parents’ committee of Emma Hoogenhout School told me that when that school had to vacate the building opposite the Alte Feste, there had been plans to move it to the present location of Maerua Mall in order to be close to Centaurus High School to which the learners graduated from Emma Hoogenhout. The parents’ committee inspected the site and then decided that it would be a great loss for Windhoek in general to destroy this beautiful and unique bit of natural vegetation and consequently Emma Hoogenhout was moved to its present site.Thus it is sincerely to be hoped that this one remaining Maerua tree will be saved and well looked after by our municipality. I have seen trees of this species at Ameib Game Ranch and on a farm between Kalkfeld and Outjo with a crown of 25 metres! Admittedly they had been watered fairly regularly. However, other large specimens of Maerua can be seen on the grounds of the SPCA and of the Boy Scouts above Centaurus High School, as well as at the entrance to the Bougain Villas shopping mall. Luise HoffmannVia e-mail