Ethnographic Arms & Armour - Simple Zulu walking stick

the wood in these sticks does look more like the 'assegai wood*' from so. africa, my sticks wood looks more like my knobkerry:
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s...Knobkerrie.jpg

*- 'assegai wood' is 'Curtisia dentata' (ref:link) More than you probably want to know about it:

Common names: assegai (Eng.); assegaai (Afr.); uSirayi, umGxina (Xhosa); umLahleni (Xhosa, Zulu); uMagunda, uMaginda, umBese, umPhephelelangeni (Zulu); iliNcayi, isiNwati (Sw); modula-tshwene (Northern Sotho); musangwe, mufhefhera (Venda)

Distribution:
The assegai grows in most of the forests in southern Africa and Swaziland, from sea level to 1 800 m. It ranges from the Cape Peninsula through the forest patches of the eastern Western Cape to the forests of the Knysna region, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Swaziland. In the forest it is usually found in climax forest and grows into a tall tree with a clean, unbuttressed bole. It also grows on grassy mountain slopes and in coastal scrub forest where it is a small bushy tree.

http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantcd/...urtisdent3.jpg

Uses & cultural information:
The timber of the assegai is good, strong and durable and has been exploited since the earliest colonial days, particularly for wagon-making-so much so that thousands must have been felled and a well-grown mature tree is still uncommon in our forests. The timber is reddish, turning red-brown with age and somewhat resembles mahogany, and is extremely tough, strong and elastic with a fine grain. As dry assegai shrinks less than most other woods, it made the best spokes of any Cape wood, and was also valuable for felloes (curved strips joined together to form the rim of a wheel). It was also used by the Voortrekkers to make axles for their wagons, and was popular too for other wagon parts, tool handles, furniture, rafters and flooring.

Derivation of the name & historical information:
Curtisia is a genus of only one species. It belongs in the Cornaceae (dogwood family), a small family of about 15 genera most of which occur in the temperate parts of the northern hemisphere. The most well-known genus is Cornus, the decorative dogwoods. Curtisia is the only southern African member of the family, and has no close relatives in southern Africa. The family gets its name from its typically hard timber, from the Latin cornu meaning horn, alluding to the hardness of the wood.

Toothed leavesCurtisia is named in honour of William Curtis (1746-1799), founder of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, first published in 1786 and still going today. The specific name dentata is Latin for toothed, and refers to the toothed leaves.

The common name assegai, is derived from the Arabic name azzaghayah, that was adopted by the Portuguese, with various modifications of spelling, and taken over by the early Dutch writers. This name was already recorded, in modern spelling, in 1625, and in 1652, Van Riebeeck referred to hassegaayen used by the natives for spears and bows. It is commonly supposed that Curtisia dentata got this common name because the shafts of assegais were once made of the wood, as Thunberg wrote in 1774, 'The Assagay tree is used for poles of wagons and as shafts for the Hottentot's javelins' (Palmer & Pitman 1972). But some dispute this and think that the name is from the resemblance of the leaves to an assegai blade and that the assumption that the wood was used to make assegais comes from the name-something of a chicken-and-egg situation, which remains unresolved. Nevertheless, this name was first recorded for Curtisia dentata in 1662 in Wagenaer's forest survey which mentions hazegaijen boomen hout (Smith 1966). To add a touch of romance to the debate, trees of this family have an ancient connection with spear-making. The shaft of the spear that Romulus flung towards the Palatine Hill when marking the boundaries of Rome is supposed to have been of a dogwood, popularly known as the cornelian cherry. By tradition, the Trojan Horse was also carved from this tree. So, trees of this family have had quite an impact on history, providing spears for Roman soldiers and possibly also African warriors, and shaping the history of Troy, and providing wood for the wagons that opened up the interior of South Africa.