Boom langs die see  (Tree by the sea): In Woodstock, Cape Town, down an obscure side street, stands a more-than-500-year-old white milkwood (Sideroxylon inerme) tree. The Old Slave Tree or Treaty Tree has borne witness to Cape history long before the nearby shoreline was lost to land reclamation and industrialisation. It has seen the Khoe defeat of the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Almeida and his men, the slave era - when people were hanged from it, their bodily fluids nourishing it and becoming part of the tree - and the signing of the peace treaty following the Battle of Blaauwberg under its branches. Today, the tree stands in a supposedly public park that is fenced off on private property and largely forgotten.