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written by Nicola Shipway
photographed by Syed Fasiuddin

“Twist one of its leafless, dead-looking stems and you
are rewarded with a sweet, aromatic scent”

Oman has much to entice nature lovers – sea, sand and salt flats, mountains and migrating birds – but native plants are not high on the list of natural wonders that lures visitors from near and far. There is a simple explanation: the native plants of the sultanate are understated, devoid of the seductiveness inherent to brighter, showier specimens from less hostile climates. But as with many things science related and seemingly impenetrable to the layman, native plants can be better appreciated after modest study, and when your tutor is as enthusiastic as Clive Winbow, you are likely to emerge a bona fide native plant enthusiast.

teeming with life
Native plants in a rocky wadi

Clive has a particular interest in native plants, and he is generous with his knowledge. “We’ll just walk down here, perhaps 200–300m, then go left a few 100m,” he says to the group of men and women who have assembled on a sunny morning for his plant walk through a wadi behind Seeb Exhibition Centre. On the drive into the wadi the caravan of cars passed workmen and lorries. This rocky site is apparently earmarked for development by Muscat Golf and Country Club – the native species currently in residence will presumably one day be replaced by imported crowd-pleasers.

“The wadi bottom is rocky and the plants that grow here are specific to the area. These are not sand plants,” explains Clive. Clutching our lists of plants, we shamble forward a few paces before Clive announces excitedly, “Number 12. Convolvulus virgatus, or maddaid in Arabic.” Everyone jostles to catch a glimpse of the unremarkable plant in question sprouting from the stony wadi floor. But this plant isn’t unremarkable when you look closely. In fact, C. virgatus is astonishingly lovely – subtle, of course, like all these tough native plants, but exquisite nonetheless. A low-growing shrub with grey-green foliage, it has small, trumpet-shaped, white flowers held on long, wiry stems. Against the backdrop of dun rock, the delicate, papery flowers are as exotic and surprising as fruit in snow.Moving on, Clive identifies Lavandula subnuda, the wild lavender, which is gauzy and faintly scented, with bracts of tiny violet flowers. Nearby grow several Blepharis ciliaris, low, prickly specimens with fabulous, gentian-blue flowers. “This plant has a spring mechanism that loosens with moisture to fling out its seed,” he adds. His conversation is peppered with botanical facts. “That’s Halothamnus bottae, a member of the goosefoot or Chenopodiaceae family,” he pronounces of an individual garlanded with cobwebs. “Chenopodiaceae are salt tolerant; this plant excretes salt in crystals on the stems.” Pointing to a dreary, greyish shrub, Clive declares it to be Commiphora wightii, a relation of myrrh (C. myrrha): twist one of its leafless, dead-looking stems and you are rewarded with a sweet, aromatic scent that calls to mind herbal fruit pastilles.

Only those with an eye for detail will appreciate these plants, some of which have flowers so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Someone spies a spiral-shaped seedpod on an Acacia tortilis; the corkscrew pod on this thorny tree is shorter than a lipstick. Another person locates the wild bitter melon, Citrullus colocynthis, called handhal in Arabic. Its green fruit, which will ripen to yellow, is the size of a golf ball and immense by comparison with every other flower, fruit and seedpod spotted in the wadi. These plants are not flamboyant flowerers: large flowers and leaves would lose too much moisture.

An eye for detail
Growing native species at home

Clive has always been interested in plants. He has lived in the sultanate since 1990, the year in which, as it happens, a committee of like-minded plant lovers including Ali al Abdullatif founded the Horticultural Association. Clive became secretary six years later. With Ali as its chairman the society continues to this day, although it is currently undergoing a transformation that involves changing its name to the Gardening Group.
Clive’s own garden is stocked mainly with native species. “It’s an environmental question really,” he says. “There’s no point pouring water on things that die if you forget to water them.” Not every fellow Gardening Group member agrees of course – many of them love and cultivate non-natives – but they are all united by a sincere love of plants. When the showstoppers wither in the heat, buy a magnifying glass and investigate the homegrown flora.

For details about the Gardening Group, which arranges garden- and plant-related events, call 99473709.

invader

Not only native species inhabit the stony wadi ground. Alongside pretty wild lavender and yellow-flowered Iphiona scabra flourishes a colony of plants that Clive describes alarmingly as “Oman’s enemy”. Prosopis juliflora, commonly called mesquite or ghuwaif in Arabic, is native to Central America but has been introduced to countries all over the world, including the sultanate, where it prospers from Muscat to Salalah. It is something of a bully, a tough, fast-growing and invasive species that rapidly colonises ground and is able to withstand both arid conditions and areas of high salinity (you can see it thriving near The Wave project in the capital). Clive points out that unfortunately the seeds are carried wherever people go, sometimes via lorry tyres. P. juliflora forms an attractive shrub or small tree, but beware: lurking beneath the fresh green foliage are poisonous, needle-sharp thorns, and when its leaves and seeds drop to the ground both inhibit other seeds from germinating. Nevertheless, it might not be all doom and gloom. P. juliflora produces a hard, slow-burning timber that can be harvested and used for barbecues, Clive suggests – in Oman, charcoal often comes from Acacia tortilis, which is a valuable fodder plant.