Environment of the Okavango Delta

'A country full of rivers - so many no one can tell their number - and full of large trees.' This is how a local guide, talking specifically about the source of Lake Ngami in the Kalarhari, described the Okavango Delta to David Livingstone in 1849.

Great banks of sighing reeds and papyrus, channels of glassy water, riverine trees leaning out over glossy lagoons and sweeping floodplains punctuated by vegetation-encrusted islands are all part of the Delta's wonderfully diverse landscape.

By the time the river has tumbled its way down from the Angolan highlands to the Delta the hills have flattened and the gradients reduced. The waters fan out lazily over a flat, sandy terrain into a chaotic pattern of waterways. The predominance of sand in the catchment areas means that the water is exceptionally clean but low in minerals and nutrients. Happily for Botswana these nutrients accumulate in the Delta and make it an area bursting with life.

The plant life of the Delta, estimated at around 1,000 species, can be separated into two main categories: aquatic and terrestrial.

The permanent swamps support the greatest concentration of aquatic plants: thick stands of papyrus and reeds alive with flitting warblers and skulking waterfowl; the hardy grasses and sedges of the shallow waters and floodplains grazed by antelope and patrolled by predators; the carpets of water lilies with their exquisite flowers, and patches of swamp forest-tangled stands of palms, waterberry species and figs

Surrounding the permanent water or marooned on any of the 150,000 or so islands that dot the landscape are the terrestrial plants. Their type and densities are dictated by soil type and availability of water. In general, the clay soils to the northeast support great stretches of mopane woodland while the sandy soils of the southwest see acacia species dominating.

Pockets of riverine forest hug river banks and the larger islands and often produce the tall trees - jackalberry, African mangosteen, sausage tree - from which the local canoes (mekoro) are carved.

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