Nature

's own carbon processing plant. The elephant's food, or as it's perhaps better know here, the spekboom, has enormous carbon-storing capabilities. Its capacity to offset harmful carbon emissions is compared to that of moist, subtropical forests. This remarkable plant is unique in that it stores solar energy to photosynthesise at night. This makes a spekboom thicket 10 times more effective at carbon fixing than any tropical rain forest per hectare: each hectare of spekboom could capture 4,2 tons of carbon annually.

The plant is remarkably easy to grow - stick it in the soil and wait. As its English name suggests, it is grazed by elephant and other game. Twigs broken of by animals quickly form new roots and thus a new plant.

(Read more at the Spekboom Foundation site, from where I got most of this information.)

And yes, I have some growing in my garden as an ornamental shrub, and yes, I have a large number of cuttings growing in the garden, and there are plans underway to sell them commercially. Watch this space...

My contribution to Chantler's October word challenge. We jump from Nature today to Luxury tomorrow.