Zanzibar does not have an autumn. While grey skies and falling leaves take over other parts of the world, the island stays green through every month of the year — and its trees are as much a part of a stay here as the beach. Here are the ones you will actually see around the garden at Boutique Hotel Matlai.
The Coconut Palm
No tree does more work on this island than the coconut palm (Cocos nucifera). The water is a drink, the flesh goes into curries and sweets, the leaves are woven into baskets, mats and thatched makuti roofs, and the husks become fuel and rope — a local saying puts it well: "a man who plants a coconut tree plants food and drink, a home and clothes, a livelihood and a medicine."
Guests who marry at Matlai, or who come back to stay with us at least three times, can plant a coconut palm of their own in a dedicated corner of the garden. On each return visit, we add a small engraved stone with their name and the date. It has grown into enough stones that we jokingly call the corner our graveyard — everyone on the team knows exactly which patch of garden that means.
Zanzibar's Spice Trees
The "Spice Island" name comes from a real trade in trees. Clove trees (Syzygium aromaticum) were once the backbone of Zanzibar's economy — the small flower buds are picked before they open and sun-dried into the cloves you know from a spice rack. Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) comes from the tree's bark, peeled and dried; true cinnamon has a sweeter, more delicate flavour than the common cassia sold as a substitute elsewhere. Nutmeg trees (Myristica fragrans) give two spices from one fruit — the seed itself and the red mace wrapped around it.
We have tried planting all three in the garden here and mostly failed — the salty soil and sea air near the coast doesn't suit them the way it suits the plantations further inland.
The Flame Tree
The flame tree (Delonix regia) is hard to miss: clusters of large red-orange flowers that turn the whole crown the colour of fire for weeks at a time, with feathery, fern-like leaves underneath for shade. It tends to bloom around Christmas, which is why some people here call it the Christmas tree — a name that once caused real confusion. When we told our Irish construction manager, during the build, that we wanted to plant some "Christmas trees" in the garden, he assumed we meant the conifer kind and told a local colleague the Germans had some strange ideas, since a Christmas tree would hardly grow in Zanzibar. The mix-up was cleared up eventually, to everyone's amusement.
The Fan Palm
Where the coconut palm has soft, swaying fronds, the fan palm brings structure — stiff, geometric, fan-shaped leaves that give a garden or pool area a tidier, more architectural look. Most varieties produce small berries, but here they are grown purely for the shape. You'll see them worked into the garden design throughout the property.
The Finger Palm
The finger palm (Rhapis excelsa) is smaller and slower-growing than most of the trees on this list, and it is actually native to Asia rather than Zanzibar — but it has settled in well here. Its leaves are divided into narrow, finger-like segments, and it is a common choice for pots on balconies and shaded courtyards. It does produce small red-to-pink fruit, but they are ornamental rather than something to eat. We use several in large pots on the balconies and around the garden.
The Neem Tree
The neem tree (Azadirachta indica) came to East Africa from the Indian subcontinent centuries ago and is used here for almost everything except food. Leaves, bark and seeds all go into traditional remedies for fevers, skin problems and digestive complaints, and a neem twig doubles as a natural toothbrush. Its Swahili name, muarubaini, is usually translated as "the tree of forty cures."
The Baobab
The baobab (Adansonia digitata) is easy to spot by its shape alone — a swollen trunk and branches that look more like roots reaching upward, which is why it is often called the upside-down tree. That trunk stores enough water to get the tree through the dry season, and the fruit, mabuyu, is turned into a tangy local candy. Some of the oldest specimens on Zanzibar are reported to be around 500 years old, and a tree near Mtende Beach is claimed by some sources to be older still, possibly over a thousand years — figures nobody can fully verify on a tree this old, but that give a sense of the scale involved.
The baobab standing next to our kitchen arrived here already three to four metres tall — it took a team of workers to lift the trunk into its planting hole, which was as much effort as it sounds. Its canopy is now a shaded, quiet spot, and if you look closely during the day you may spot one of our smallest residents, a bush baby, curled up asleep on a branch.
The Mkungu Tree
Walk along almost any beach in Zanzibar and you will pass a mkungu tree (Terminalia catappa, also called the tropical or Indian almond) — wide, tiered branches forming a natural umbrella of shade, planted along the shoreline as much for its root system as its looks. The roots hold sandy coastal soil in place, the leaves turn red, yellow and orange before dropping (a brief, tropical stand-in for autumn), and the fruit contains an edible, nutty-tasting seed.
We planted several mkungu trees in the garden for the shade, which worked — but we also got a side effect nobody planned for: local fruit bats love the red fruit, and they eat mid-flight. The result is that our bright walls and paths pick up dark red spots wherever the bats pass over. Bats are said to dislike the smell of cinnamon, so we've hung small bags of cinnamon sticks around the garden to discourage them.
The Casuarina
The casuarina (Casuarina equisetifolia) looks like a pine from a distance, with fine, drooping needles, but it is actually a hardwood tree, not a conifer — the name comes from a resemblance to the feathers of the cassowary, a flightless bird. It is planted along Zanzibar's coasts specifically to hold sandy soil in place and block wind, and it tolerates salty air better than most trees. The wood makes good firewood and timber, and the sound of wind through its needles has earned it the nickname "whistling pine." The one thing it is not good for is a barefoot beach walk — casuarina trees constantly drop needles and small, prickly seed pods, so if you want soft sand underfoot, this is not the tree you plant next to it.