The Fynbos Blog

For a blog that records flowers on our mountain there isn’t a lot to report.  The end of summer is once again hot and dry, we’ve had one decent fall of rain and a little drizzle here and there, interspersed with days hot enough to make the earth hot, dry and hollow as a drum.

There is a serious drought in the Cape, with dams at some of their lowest levels ever recorded.  If we don’t have heavy rains in April Cape Town will be in serious trouble.  Don’t tell anyone, but here on the farm we have never had so much water at the end of summer.  With all the trees gone along the riverbeds high above us, the water is pouring down the mountain strong and pure.  As a consequence the dams below us may not be full but they are not doing too badly.

The dogs and I run through the desolate landscape; the girls play in the empty land, sniffing and running on the cooler mornings.

Meath surveys the farm

There are signs of life.  The first things to emerge after the fire are the ferns.  They stud the black earth with bright green flares.

There was a yellow daisy for a day or two.  Then it disappeared, almost as though it made a mistake and decided to wait for better times.  I am sure it is Haplocapha lanata which flowers especially after fire and has the peculiarity  of being leafless.

Haplocarpha lanata

The most surprising thing of all is that just a couple of weeks after the fires this Asparagus rubicundis emerged all over the farm.  A small shrub that I have recorded in flower only once before, but clearly it likes the fire, it is the only green flowering thing on the mountain and it’s all over the place, anywhere that has a bit of damp from a watercourse it flourishes and flowers like mad.

Asparagus rubicundis

Almost all the proteas are gone and I cannot imagine how long it will take them to grow back in their thousands.  One is making an astonishing recovery.  Protea nitida, which I was particularly sad to lose, as it grows into a tree putting out huge fluffy white flowers in winter and great redheads of regrowth in spring.  To my delight the trees are recovering fast, they seem to be fireproof, even where the fire burned hottest and destroyed everything most of nitidas have glowing trunks in the black landscape.  If the trunk is too badly damaged the leaves emerge from the ground.  Mostly they are coming into leaf quite quickly.  It will be a delight to see them flower, perhaps later than normal but I hope they do.

Protea nitida

The leaves of Protea nitida emerging

This is, I hope, the very start of a massive outpouring of life and recovery.