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Monthly Archives: December 2013

Christmas Fynbos

Posted on December 27, 2013 by fynbosblog 3 comments

Travel at Christmas is always fraught with risk. We left for a short trip to Ireland to spend the weekend before Christmas with a very dear friend, celebrating his 50th birthday. Thereby infuriating a whole series of family members, who believed that if we were in Ireland that close to Christmas, we should see them, not friends. Sorry. We then braved a lot of stormy flooding roads and wild bouncing skies, along with a Heathrow made worse than ever by the despairing passengers whose flights were cancelled two days before Christmas. Our plane, thank goodness, slipped through the weather and flung itself southwards and even managed to land in Cape Town without crashing, unlike another flight at O R Tambo in Johannesburg which walloped its wing by crashing into a building on the ground causing a mighty row between air traffic control and the British Airways pilot. You can imagine. No-one got hurt.

We arrived home on the 24th, back to the farm, the dogs and our gorgeous friends who came for Christmas. The fabulous David in Paarl did all the catering for us, so we had a wonderful self-indulgent break. Hubert sat beside me at dinner and explained that he doesn’t really love this blog because it’s too academic for him. He’s one of the cleverest people I know, so I think that, as a friend who lives most of the year far away, he’d rather more gossip and fewer flowers. Those last two paragraphs were for you, Hubert.

Meanwhile out on the mountain the dogs and I have been running regularly and loving it. Summer runs take in lots of water breaks. You hear of big dogs dehydrating so I’m careful about that and make sure the dogs are always in sight so that I can spot if anyone gets distressed.

Seamus and Maebh enjoying the water at Fox Pan on a very dry sunny windy morning

Lots of things enjoy the summer weather and the Christmas collection includes a snake nearly trodden on by Noella, who was remarkably calm about it. Also a red lipped tortoise, charming creatures and we see them quite often. This morning a scorpion ran across our path, minding his own business. I love seeing these things, but it’s another good reason to keep the dogs in sight, just in case they get too inquisitive about something nasty.

The flowers may not be profuse, but there are still plenty of things out there to interest us. Some choose to flower in the hottest driest of weather, like the helichrysum that covers the mountain.

Helichrysum

There are plenty of Pelargoniums that don’t mind the heat and choose the hottest months for their flowering. I’ve taken a lesson from the mountain and planted lots more of these in the garden.

One of the many subspecies of wild Pelargonium that grows on the mountain

I have only seen these orange spikes in one particularly damp spot on the road that leads up to the pine forest. They are known as wild dagga and the dried leaves traditionally have been used medicinally but are not a narcotic or tobacco substitute, contrary to what some of the local residents have told me.

Wild dagga, Leonotus leonurus

I love this Selago corymbosa which flowers only in the dry months on it’s long softly spiking stems.

Selago corymbosa

There are 35 fynbos lobelias and they are really stunning, especially in close up. I’m going to suggest that this one is Lobelia pinifolia because many of them have hairless flowers while this one is quite clearly hairy.

Lobelia pinifolia

This is known as the blue pea and is most likely Psoralea restioloides, choosing to flower late in its season near the stream that marks our boundary with the nature reserve at the top of the farm.

Psorolea restioloides, the blue pea

This, oddly, is known as the Christmasberry, although it flowers at Christmas and the spectacular red berries appear in the autumn. It is a common shrub, with a distribution along the coasts and a good way inland from Namaqualand on the West Coast of South Africa all the way to KwaZulu-Natal on the Eastern Coast. Perhaps among all those different habitats there is one in which the berries appear at Christmas.

Christmas berry, Chironia baccifera

I love these protea cones though I can’t remember which member of the protea family this shrub belongs to.

Protea cone

This time of year brings the most magnificent sunsets and with friends staying we often take a sunset walk with the dogs. We’ve had tremendous winds this spring and suddenly over Christmas they’ve dropped and the weather has been perfect, sunny but not too hot. The air is amazing, a light breeze, slight damp dew falling as the sun goes down. Fewer flowers perhaps but the valley below us is a theatre of glorious changing light.

The evening light in the olive groves above the house

Sunset on Christmas Day

Wild windy summer sunsets

Posted on December 11, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

I never get tired of looking at the view from the balcony and because we look west we have wonderful sunsets. Tonight’s was special by any standard. I took this photo just as the sun had gone down – no filter, just the last light of the setting sun reflected from the clouds onto the dam.

Sunset over the dam

We had Christopher, the brother-in-law, to stay and before he left I offered to take him up the mountain and show him the flowers. All spring we’ve had a wonderful time showing our guests the wonders of the mountain fynbos flowers. That time has passed. He loved being up on the mountain but the flowers have become sparse and less interesting to the casual visitor. A really passionate gardner might still enjoy it – for the less passionate there is merely fading and die back and the fucundity of the land has passed into dryness survival mode.

It doesn’t mean that there is nothing of interest out there, I’ve often mentioned that yellow daisy-like flowers are among the hardest to identify. This one could be the rock daisy, Heterolopis, or perhaps Leysera. If I see it again which is quite likely we’ll take a closer look.

Heterolopis or Rock Daisy?

The wind continues to blow – it has been more than a week now, which is quite unusual and not a let up in the forecast. The dogs love it particularly the wolfhounds and here is Maebh standing in the wind, allowing it to stream through her coat.

Maebh poses in the evening light, letting the wind slip through her coat

Jemima Chew on the other hand finds her solace in water and the permanent streams. She loves to wallow and lie the flow and then stands up, looking about her, thoroughly pleased with herself.

Jemima Chew – life is good

As Christopher and I chatted and walked I kept my eyes open for anything new and exciting, expectations low. And here we are, hidden beneath some fynbos scrub, this exquisite pelargonium. There are nearly 300 subspecies, 150 in the fynbos region of which only 20 or so are in the book. This one is so lovely, the colours, the delicate shape of the petals. I would be tempted to move it to the garden but my fingers are not the greenest and what if it’s the only one? I only ever transplant the very common flowers, anything that might be rare, special or precious belongs on the mountain.

A Pelargonium we have not seen before

Gloomy northern skies and dreams of fynbos flowers

Posted on December 8, 2013 by fynbosblog 2 comments

Sitting in an office in Stockholm on a gloomy day it is hard to imagine the glories of Saturday morning’s run. The light, the warmth, the howling wind. Seamus and Meabh stand face on, heads up, loving the feel of the wind ruffling their coats. As ever there is something new to see – this gorgeous Tritonia undulata which has emerged in quite a few places. It’s very distinctive and very lovely, what a treasure to find on a Sunday morning.

Tritonia undulata

I stopped to try and capture a good picture of it of course, and as I trotted on up the hill I reflected on how much less fit I am than I was when I started this blog. You would think that blogging what I see when I’m out on a run would get me out running more. But the problem is that my runs are longer – I can never resist a new flower, especially as anything that is a bulb may be gone by tomorrow, and each picture takes a few minutes as I try to find the best angle and the best light. Sometimes, perversely, that even puts me off from going out at all because I don’t have the time I need to do a proper run and photograph the flowers as well. It will be an ongoing dilema and really, as with so many problems in one’s life could probably be solved if I got up earlier…

One of the flowers that inspired me to start the blog has suddenly emerged. It’s known as the comb flower, Micranthus junceus, and is one of the first that I identified because of its distinctive shape and pretty blue flowers.

Micranthus junceus, the Combflower

As I do the research and leaf through the books hunting for flowers, inevitably one passes stunning flowers in the book and thinks – “never seen that one, I wonder if it grows on this mountain.” This Roella ciliata is such a flower with its gorgeous lilac-blue and inky collar. I spotted it out of the corner of my eye as we ran down one of the paths in the forest and felt like an excited hunter who has finally found a screcretive and exclusive quarry.

Roella ciliata

Much more common is this butterfly lily, the splendidly named Wachendorphia paniculata I posted it not long ago, but can’t resist posting this lovely example which is growing along the drive and which looked particularly fine against the sandstone wall.

Wachendorfia paniculata

Finally a couple of flowering bulbs that I haven’t identified, one blue, one yellow. The blue one has a twisting spike out of which the flowers grow and the yellow one grows tightly out of its stalk like a delphinium. I haven’t been able to identify them in the general fynbos books and I really need a night in with the encyclopaedia of fynbos bulbs to see if I can identify these and a couple of others that we still have not named. Sometimes it’s just a matter of a better photograph and all is revealed. A good project for hot summer nights when the pressure of new flowers has eased and we will start a job of identifying and cataloging what we’ve found.