Koker

Koker keeps an armory she never uses. The quiver tree of the Namib — a branching aloe grown to treehood — has hollow branches the San people have hollowed for centuries into quivers for their hunting arrows. She gave them freely, the fallen limbs, and asks only that the hunters remember: the quiver held the arrows; the tree held the quiver. One ancient quiver still hangs in her branches, unshot arrows and all, a museum of a partnership. "They took my arms to carry their weapons," she says, "and I am still here, which tells you who needed whom." The Desert Court, counting its liters, counts her shade as a public good — travelers rest under her forked crown at noon. Her flowers burn orange-red against the desert in winter. An armory, a shelter, a torch: the court's most useful tree.