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Category Archives: Fynbos

A quiet walk

Posted on July 8, 2016 by fynbosblog 3 comments

For once I don’t have much to say. Luckily the rain has been falling and the flowers on this beautiful mountain speak for themselves. This is the exquisite Morea tripetala that grows all over the farm. It is tiny, like a little iris.

Mulratia heisteria flowers all year round, and is especially prolific when the winter rains arrive in force. The waterfall is roaring and the whole place is damp. I am beginning to quite like the rain…

The delicate Stachys aethiopica grows all through winter and spring along damp banks. Being delicate it sways in the slightest breeze which makes it difficult to get a perfectly focused photograph.

Of course we should be famous for our Ericas. We have dozens of different varieties and this, Erica plukenetii, has just begun its long flowering season. It comes in white and a particularly delicate shade of pink. It’s supposed to flower all year round but here on the farm it likes the cool damp of winter and the gentle warmth of spring.

I’m not sure I’ve seen this before. I think it may be a Geissorhiza but I am not sure which one. There are 80 fynbos species so that’s not entirely surprising. I must post it on iSpot and see if the experts can tell me.

The proteas and leucadendrons have been fabulous on evening runs. Lucadendron salignum, Protea nerifolia, and Protea nitida.

Finally, Seamus the wolfhound, legend of many many spectacular runs on this farm is not well tonight. Wolfhounds are susceptible to heart conditions and at nine years old it is not surprising that his heart is not the best. He hasn’t been running on the mountain for the past year; here is a photo from a recent stroll, I hope we shall have many more.

Flowers, Fire and Drought, an African Summer Season

Posted on December 31, 2015 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

The Christmas season is one where the dogs and I relish the break and spend more time on the mountain. There are fewer flowers as the fynbos battens down the hatches for the onset of summer, but there is always something. After a dry winter and as the season gets ever drier, regular friends fail to appear. I caught a flash of red on the drive as we drove out the other day and smiled to myself thinking “great, the Tritoniopsis triticea is in flower, we’ll catch lots of them on the mountain on our next run.” Not one so far, not even one. Perhaps they will appear later in the month but already I know they won’t be as profuse as usual. We did come across the charming Micranthus alopecuroides, the “comb flower”. It’s easy to miss because it’s quite tiny, and quite rare too, but we often find a few at the bottom of the drive around Christmas time.

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Meanwhile our crops are winning the battle – the buchu is hardy and drought resistant and the olives are better this year than they have been for the last couple, largely, we suspect, because we had less wind during the crucial spring flowering season.

Talking of wind, a friend came to stay the other night and woke up expecting to see devastation from the storm she’d heard howling around the house during the night and surprised that everything about the place was dry. No, we explained, laughing, that was a normal night wind in summer, not even a big one.

El Nino is the culprit of course and these cyclical droughts are normal. It’s our first since being on the farm though and it’s quite chilling to see how the stream, which we believe to be permanent, has slowed to a trickle and our raging waterfall is a pathetic drizzle. The dams below us empty at a worrying rate and the farms in this valley will be glad when the harvest is in. Peter is reassuring and reminds me that “this is Africa.” He has lived through long multi-year droughts in the low veld. We must all hope for a wet winter this year, but before we can even begin we must get through the summer. Fires is our big fear – there was a huge one far from us on the other side of the Franschhoek pass on St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day to the non-Irish) and the clouds of smoke covered the entire peninsula, flooding with colour at sunset.

The odd thing for me, being European, is that the holiday season here falls over Christmas, at the very beginning of summer. So when the holidays are over, the heat really starts and it’s back to work. I love the heat and find that I can cope with being active at under 35 degrees. Between 35 and 40 I prefer not to be too energetic. Over 40 I am frankly uncomfortable. Yesterday it was 42 degrees all afternoon and I succumbed entirely, lying on a sofa at the back of the house, the cooler side, reading a novel and dozing away the afternoon. I ran in the early morning, enjoying the forest next to us, which is due to be taken down in the next couple of years, we will miss the shady paths…

I have neglected this year to take up the challenge of the yellow daisies They are the hardest to identify and I have been lazy. Here goes….

To start with the prickly bush thistle, which we first saw out running in July, Cullumia setosa.

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Next comes the distinctive Cape Weed, Arctotheca calendula which also flowers from July to November and we see it all the time, all over the farm.

Another one flowering everywhere from the beginning of spring to early summer is Euryops abrotanifolius, common but quite charming.

Next is the Heterolepis alien, the rock daisy with it’s distinctive sparsely toothed grey leaves. If these are all looking the same you can understand why the identification is a challenge.

There are two more that I have not identified and I will ask the ispot group to help me with them and report back.

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The Day After the Hottest Day

Posted on March 4, 2015 by fynbosblog One comment

Yesterday, March 2nd 2015, was the hottest day in Cape Town for 100 years. Fires raged on the Cape Penninsula and we could do nothing but think of our poor friends all over the Cape evacuating their homes, of the animals that had to be evacuated and of the wildlife on the mountains that must be suffering terribly. In many areas all that is left is a bare lunar landscape. This blog is dedicated to all our friends who have been battling the fires for the last three days.

All the more terrifying because we live on a mountain that is overdue a big fire, and beside a huge pine forest. As we worried about our friends yesterday a small fire broke out on our mountain, but was quickly contained by our local fire services.

The strange weather has contributed; on Sunday this wild windy sunset light the sky, and was followed by unbelievable howling winds that stripped the young olives off our trees. The wind howled all day on Monday and then dropped in the evening, to be followed yesterday by a day of searing heat all over the province. We quite often get temperatures of over 40 degrees down in the valley, but almost never here on the mountain. It was 42 all over the Cape yesterday, even here on the farm at 5 pm as we wound down from a long hot day.

Wild and windy night

Table Mountain glows in the fiery light

As quickly as the heat appeared it was gone. This morning was remarkably cool and I went for a long run with the dogs. The sky was cloudy and drops of rain spat from the sky. This weather is most bizzare. There are not many flowers on the mountain, but some signs of life to come all the same. A pink tipped Protea Repens and a Pelargonium that can flower all the year round but still amazing that this plant should choose this hottest driest month to show it’s enchanting face.

Pelargonium myrrhifolium var myrrhifolium

The air was still and cool but the remains of the great heat still came as a powerful beat from the earth; there is no proper rain in the forecast and we can only pray that the Gods are kind to us and that fire does not come to claim us this year.

Christmas, a wedding, and a little contemplation

Posted on December 31, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

Christmas and a house full of family and friends. Running on the mountain continues with a bride (Peter’s son gets married on 8 Jan and they are staying with us) who is keen to keep her figure elegant through the Christmas indulgence so the running is serious and the opportunities to stop and take pictures infrequent at best. We’ve been running through the pine forest that adjoins the farm; in the warm summer weather the stately silence of the trees and the dappled cool of the forest is a welcome break from the heat and the wind. Because the dogs get protective I tend not to run in the forest except on Sunday mornings and at Christmas when the foresters take a break.

We did a farm run for a change this morning and saw this Tritoniopsis burchellii; the guests were good enough to wait while I snapped it. I’ve been waiting for it to flower – I first saw it last year about this time. They are an incredible shade of scarlet that seems almost surreal on this photo.

Tritoniopsis burchellii

The Salvia africana is also in full bloom on the mountain – it flowers beautifully all year round and I can never resist taking a shot of it when the light is good.

Salvia africana

After I posted the Gladiolus liliaceus before Christmas quite a few more came out above the waterfall and we went back up to take some photos of better flowers. Peter came with me once again, the dogs followed. We spent a happy half an hour finding the best flowers. I took a shot of the same flower in the morning to show how remarkably they open up in the evening light. The dogs of course take great delight in watching our antics.

Gladiolus liliaceus in the evening

Gladiolus liliaceus

Gladiolus liliaceus in the morning when the flowers are closed

Seamus and Maebh watching Peter as he inspects the fynbos flowers

It’s a funny time of year this. We love it, there are great friends who come to stay and family as well. The house is full of noise and this year, Peter’s first grandchild. There is a tinge of sadness as well. Most of the precious people I’ve lost have gone between the middle of December and the end of January. It’s a well known phenomenon that people pass away at Christmas, for many reasons and all of them different. So in the celebration and coming together there is also sadness, regret and reflective moments. Loss. These days are busy and full of treats and fun. As we run on the mountain with the dogs bounding after Ola who bounces along ahead like the resident klipspringers, tiny antelopes with spongy feet that allow them to spring across the rocks, I follow and in the beauty of these mountains I think of those who have departed, and quietly remember them. Not always sadly; there is pleasure in the memories, they are gone but they were wonderful and we were lucky to have known them.

Diet and Exercise – The Truth of the Matter

Posted on October 30, 2014 by fynbosblog 3 comments

I reached a target today. This weekend I’m riding in a competition and I really wanted to lose the extra couple of kilos before the show. I weighed myself this morning. Wow, I actually made my target!

And as I was out running this morning it occurred to me that I’ve never talked about diet. Or, let’s call a spade a spade, dieting. This blog is about the run and the flowers. But why run at all? I saw a brilliant ad once, for Reebok shoes called “Belly gonna get you!” A man was chased around New York city by the fat belly he’d have if he didn’t run. That’s why I run; I’m afraid that belly will get me. I run away from the fat person I don’t want to be. The trouble is, I like to eat. Not in an unconsidered full fat sugar chocolate driven way, more a fine dining, excellent and delicious food kind of way. And as Peter said when I mentioned that his daughter complains that we don’t keep treats in the house, “our treats come in bottles”.

Perhaps it’s time for a flower, captured on this morning’s run, before I continue this little dietary indulgence.

This is an absolute favourite, if only for its splendid name. Not the best photos, they were captured early this morning and I was more focused on the run and my thoughts about weight and fat than flowers. There will be a few of them to come all over the farm and I’ll capture a better shot of this lily named Wachendorfia paniculata.

Wachendorfia paniculata

Back to the diet. All my life I have struggled. My family, on both sides, survived the Irish Famine in the mid-19th century for a reason. If we were horses we’d be called good doers. We do terribly well on terribly little. Most of my cousins have struggled as I have. If you stop the struggle, woah, clothes sizes accumulate with terrifying speed.

So I run away from the fat person I don’t want to be. And as I was running away down the drive this morning I couldn’t resist a shot of this Leucospermum lineare, the Vulnerable, from a baby plant on the drive. This endangered and quite rare member of the protea family is thriving here on the farm.

Leucospermum lineare

Here in Cape Town everyone is Banting. This is the name a doctor called Tim Noakes has given his diet which is a kind of super-powered Atkins. High fat, medium protein, very low carb. I think it’s rather revolting but I do have to admit that people who stick to it, really stick to it, religiously stick to it, do lose weight. Some of them have got quite thin. But as he says in his book, if you don’t stick to it, you’ll balloon. Now I’ve tried most diets; I really mean that, you name it I’ve done it; a lifetime of diets. It’s been my constant, rather boring obsession. But one thing I know is that if I’m required to cut out major food groups, I’m not happy. I might lose weight, but I’m not happy. I can tell you from experience that the best diet is abject misery, really proper, grieving kind of misery, like after a break up, or when someone you adore dies. That’s no way to live but unfortunately being happy makes you fat. I believe certain drugs can be fabulous, but again, not a way to live. Smoking was marvellous, but… once again, not a great option for life and I gave it, and control over my weight up when I was 28. I put on that stone that I’ve never really lost. I’ve lost weight on Weightwatchers and on the Dukan diet, but not really on any other, until now. Running is great for controlling weight, but not so much for losing it. Every holiday, every time I travel on business, a sneaky kilo or two is gained and oh, the dread of getting it off. Yet I’m not interested in never having another slice of bread, never baking a cake again, never eating an amazing dinner, all five courses, with absolute pleasure. And I do like a vodka and soda with a splash of Campari after a long day as I make dinner, usually a very healthy dinner during the course of a normal week. And a glass of wine, or two.

So I run. Three times a week, pretty much every week. Sometimes four times. If I run at the weekend I’ll do 5K or 6K, but otherwise it’s 4K. And I do Pilates twice a week. Vainly hoping that I may have my cake and eat it too, with a glass of champagne. Worrying about my weight has probably occupied more of my waking hours than any other single subject. You’d think that all that worry would mean I’d take control and just eat less, but it doesn’t seem to work like that. Those famine genes want feeding, but the famine’s over, so delicious things preferred, please.

In August 2013 I picked up a book, rather randomly, in an airport and read it on the plane. A colleague I’d been working with in Qatar was looking fantastic and told me about this diet. It is called 5:2 and I immediately knew it was for me. The logic is divinely simple. Two days a week you eat 500 calories, that’s 2000 kilojoules. The rest of the time you eat normally. And where before you might slightly overeat on a weekly basis and gradually gain weight, by cutting out 1500 – 2000 calories a week, every week, you gradually lose weight. I’ve always found it easy not to eat for a day, it’s following dietary restrictions day after day after day that I struggle with, especially with a lifestyle where we travel a lot, socialise a good bit and love to eat out. Never mind the “treats in a bottle”. The book also described huge health benefits that the diet provides – when your body doesn’t have to worry about digesting food, it finds all sorts of useful repair jobs to do instead. Intermittent fasting turns out to be amazingly good for you.

Peter doesn’t do it with me and is kind enough to fend for himself on my “2” days. He doesn’t love it, but he loves the result. It works. I haven’t become skinny but my average has come down. It’s not a totally steady loss. The closest way I can describe it is if you look at a one year chart of the FTSE, the London Stock Exchange. Take out the big plunge this October and that’s been my dieting year. In line with the FTSE, except we want the FTSE to go up and the weight to go down! The point is, the peaks don’t go up and up and the control has been stable. A trip, or a heavy social agenda, a kilo creeps on here and there. With the regular “2” days, once normal eating and exercise are established, off it comes. If I make a bit more effort, it comes off quite easily, never quickly, about 250g to 500g a week. But off it does come. And I don’t have to think about it. Just do it. It took me a while to get used to eating so little so little in a day, but now I enjoy it – I just don’t have to think about food. As for being hungry, that’s ok, for a day. Tomorrow I can have what I want. It’s no longer a diet, it’s a way of life.

I’ve told all my friends about this wonderful diet and only one has really got it, loves it and does it as a habit as do I. I don’t know why, everyone wants to lose, or at least control their weight, and this is the easiest, most pain free way I’ve ever found that achieves just that.

We went out one evening this week to run up the mountain and saw the glory of another sunset. The light in the olive groves, the view of the sun setting behind Paarl Rock with Table Mountain in the background. I may only be running away from my genes but at least I get to run here, on the mountain, with the wolfhounds, in the glory of the light.

Spring light in the olive groves

Sun setting behind Paarl Rock

Windy Mountain

Posted on October 13, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Spring is turning into summer on the mountain and the wind is howling at night and most of the day. There is an afternoon lull but already, at 7 o’clock in the evening, I can hear it picking up outside the office and later it will whip around the house and rattle the roof.

I spent the weekend in George, along the famous Garden Route at a Horse Trials, the Western Province Championships. We had fun, didn’t win any big prizes, but spent the weekend with our friends and got to gallop fast over solid fences which is the most fun you can have on a horse.

On Friday morning I went for a run in the suburbs of George and enjoyed sightings of fynbos flowers that have adapted to the urban environment. Here on the farm I know only of one place where the Gladiolus maculatus blooms and that’s in July. Looking at the book I see they are winter flowering but I saw them, or something very similar, in a spot of suburban wasteland as I ran past. Perhaps I should have taken a closer look.

When I don’t take them running often enough the dogs get bored and take themselves off for their own runs. Sometimes they are gone for hours and we get increasingly worried about them until they come home, panting and joyful, terribly pleased with themselves and usually soaking wet as they’ve stopped for a cooldown in the dam on the way back to the house. Several dogs have disappeared on the mountain that we know of and we worry and worry when they are gone, we go looking for them and calling them for hours and never see a sign. Last time I checked there was no tracker available that would work here in South Africa but recently I heard of one, so I searched again and found it in Germany. It arrived today and has now been attached to Maebh. She and Jemima Chew often go for a quick hunt in the evening, and sometimes Maebh and Seamus go off together, but for some reason, never the three together. If Maebh has a tracker, we’ll know where to find them.

I know better than to think I will get any photos in this wild wind, but I’ll see what’s there and where to go when the wind drops. They say in Cape Town that if you don’t like the weather today, don’t worry because it will be different tomorrow and the change in weather is heralded by the wind dropping to that incredible stillness on the mountain that I’ve so often written about. When that happens we will pick a moment of good light to catch the latest spring flowers. In the meantime there is much to catch up on. Last year I failed to name this blue flower so I posted it on ispot. The experts suggest it might be Aspalathus cephalotes subspecies obscuriflora.

Aspalathus cephalotes subsp. obscuriflora

Aspalathus cephalotes

Another pretty thing I couldn’t identify is this white “flower” which is tiny and turns out to be the seedhead of Ursinia anthemoides which I photographed in August but hadn’t posted, much more interesting to post the two together now.

Ursinia anthemoides in flower

The seedhead of Ursinia anthemoides

I love these fluffy heads that must be Stilbe, I think vestita.

Stilbe vestita

The other fluffy flowers that I photographed some time ago and never posted are the wild buchu plants that grow on the farm. Our crop is buchu, Agathomsa crenulata and hybrids thereof, and Agathomsa betulina. These are used medicinally and in the food flavouring and perfume industries because of the powerful essential oils that have an intense note of blackcurrant. I occassionally post photos of the buchu we farm which is indigenous to the area. This is a genuinely wild buchu, probably either Agathomsa imbricata or capensis.

Agathomsa – wild buchu

As I was running down one of the roads I noticed that it was bordered by shrubs of Salvia africana all in flower and would make a wonderful photo. Being in a hurry I put it off only to find when I returned that a spring wind had blown the flowers to shreds. They are tough and they flower all year but the best display is in a wet spring. They are stalwart friends on the mountain with an exceptional colour and fortunately enough remained for me to capture some of the flowers.

Salvia africana-cerulea

Salvia africana cerulea

Summer is Helichrysum season and it begins with this Helichrysum patulum. We have several subspecies of this wonderful and resilient plant on the farm and they deserve a page of their own.

Helichrysum patulum

Along the drive the Crassula fascicularis has come into flower.

Crassula fascicularis

Finally, one of my top favourite flowers has emerged, the lovely spikes of Aristea capitata, unmistakable and one of the first flowers I identified when we bought the farm and I started running here. These are prolific in damp areas and I hope they will be spectacular this year after the wet winter. We’ll have more photos of them over the next month.

Aristea capitata

Aristea Capitata

Bulbs and a Couple of Peas and an Irish Wolfhound or two

Posted on September 30, 2014 by fynbosblog 3 comments

What a busy week it has been. I must apologise to friends who prefer the chatty blog to the technical botanical blog. At this time of year there is so much to share, so we have a botanical phase for now and more chat will inevitatably follow.

Although I have been wanting to post a collection of flowering bulbs for some time there was a small problem with identifying one or two. The best way to get help is to post on ispot, where the South African flora and fauna geeks all post their sighting and help one another out with identification. Sure enough, within a couple of days I’ve had some help and can now happily identify a paricularly pretty apricot flower as yet another Moraea, this time miniata.

Moraea miniata

The other one is our most common gladiolus, which the experts identify as the famous and common Painted Lady, Gladiolus carneus, known as the White Afrikaner. This must be right yet it is also frustrating as the books insist on the red splash on the lower petals while mine splash yellow. Everything else fits though and they are just coming into flower now so I’ll be on a determined hunt for red splashes and I’m sure over the next few weeks I’ll post a few more photos of this really stunning Gladiolus.

Gladiolus carneus

The White Afrikaner, the painted, lady

Running last week was great from a running point of view as the weather was dry and windy and I have learned that taking pictures of flowers is best left for days with little or no wind. The dogs loved the faster pace and once again we had a photogenic moment when Seamus and Maebh stopped at Fox Pan for a drink as we ran up the dry side of our farm.

There is such an abundance of flowers this year and every step of the run means another group or another flower. There are shrubs I haven’t stopped to photograph because I think, they’ll still be there in a couple of weeks. Flowering bulbs are different, they have a short life and you only get a few days to capture them. I know I don’t see them all, for example last year I completely missed this dramatic Moraea bellendenii and this lovely Aristea spiralis which both flower at the same time, when I was away.

Moraea bellendenii

Aristea spiralis

Other bulbs that flower at this time of year include Geissorhiza aspera, which opens when the sun shines and covers the lands in blue stars. And yet another Aristea, the pretty Aristea africana, which is often used in gardens. The pink Wurmbea punctata is much less common and easy to miss, it’s snuggled up to several shrubs along a busy road and there are very few of them. The Baeometra uniflora which is not very prettily known as the Beetle Lily, it is choosy about where it lives and grows prolifically in one specific spot.

Geissorhiza aspera

Aristea africana

Wurmbea punctata

Baometra uniflora

There are a couple more I don’t have names for, I’ll see if the geeks can help. This first one is tiny – the flowers are less than half the size of the nail on my little finger. I really should be able to name the second one, but there are quite a few flowers that look like this, so I’m not sure. And the third one is the most exquisite little thing – also tiny.

The first one

Another image of the first one, showing the flame red leaves

The second one

The third one

Finally, two distinctive peas. One is simply known as the Blue Pea, Psoralea aphylla, found in marshy places and along streams, which is exactly where we saw it. The other is prolific at the moment along the top road and very distinctive; I’m pretty sure it is Lotononis of which there are 40 odd fynbos varieties and only two are covered in my book. It isn’t either of those but the tri-foliate leaves and solitary flowers on slender stems are a bit of a giveaway.

Lotononis

Lotononsis

All about Ericas

Posted on September 22, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

An interesting question came from a follower of this blog: where does the inspiration come from? How do I sit down and write 500 – 100 words every week or so? I’ve never thought about it – the inspiration comes from the run, the beauty of the place, sometimes, wild, sometimes spiritual, always theatrical. Every time it’s the same story, I took my dogs, we went for a run on our farm, we saw flowers. Like Heraclites’s river it’s always the same and always different and there is another tale to tell. I do my best thinking on the run. I don’t listen to music and my mind is free to wander and ponder. Mostly I think about work or about what I’m going to put in the blog. The thought about Heraclites and his river, fished out from the bubbling spring of knowledge that was my first philosophy lecture at Trinity, came to mind on a run. By the time I actually sit down and write, the words are clamouring to be put on the page and it’s only a matter of deciding how to present it. The titles are another matter – I read somewhere that titles matter a lot when you blog, so I have to consider my theme and find an elegant arrangement of words that will capture the reader’s interest and make them want to read further.

At this time of year the sheer volume of flowers on the mountain is overwhelming. We went for a run on Saturday evening; the air was calm and still and the run was about 60% photos and 40% run. Luckily by Sunday morning a wind had picked up and I’ve learned there’s no point in trying to photograph flowers when their long stems are being blown by the wind; much better for my fitness! I took just one photo, of Seamus loving the feeling of the wind in his coat.

Seamus enjoying the wind as he trots up the mountain with Paarl visible in the valley below

Seamus lets the wind stream through his coat with Paarl visible in the valley below

Last year some readers complained that bacame a bit obssessive about the flowers and they missed the bit of chat that goes with the blog. So this year I shall do some frequent posts and place the flowers in groups, starting with the Ericas. I’ve mentioned before that one of the interesting things about the Cape Floral Kingdom is that it is the most diverse in the world, accounting for the hundred of species growing on our small farm. And Ericas are the most diverse of all, with around 860 subspecies and 660 of those are fynbos. So it’s not a surprise that they are not always easy to identify. I’ve included here some Erica’s that we haven’t posted yet – there are many many more in flower and I will try and add an Erica page when I have time to do some cataloguing.

One particular favourite grows at the top of the waterfall, on the other side of the stream. If you look closely you can just see it at the top of the fall. In reality it’s a vibrant splash of pink. It’s quite far from the road; I risked a soaking and my still recovering ankle to bring you these photos of the perfectly named Erica multumbellifera in full bloom.

The waterfall on a spring evening

Erica multumbellifera

Erica Multumbellifera

Erica abietina comes in many colours: yellow, orange, red or magenta. Those on our farm are all this fabulous scarlet, quite often hard to photograph because the shiny flowers reflect the light intensely.

Erica Abietina

Another charming pink Erica has emerged higher up at the very top of the farm where the damp and little used road encourages lots of fynbos growth. This one has little pinky-white bells. There are lots of subspecies with little pink bells which makes them hard to identify – even in the book the descriptions are almost exactly the same. The flowers are almost too tiny to be seen with the naked eye, the iphone camera does a great job of enlarging them.

Erica with tiny pinky-white bells

Even smaller is this white-flowering rambling Erica. Seamus helpfully stood beside the plant so that you can get an idea of just how very tiny the flowers are. Then I used the iphone camera with a microlens to get a decent image of the flowers which are very white with little teeth on the edges. When this shrub finds a place it likes it spreads and spreads and swarthes of land are covered in it in sections.

Seams and the white Erica

Tiny white flowers

You can see the teeth and single protruding anther – protruding anthers are a common feature of Ericas

The colour of home

Posted on September 2, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

What a welcome home. We arrived back from a 10 day trip from Europe and for once it was a holiday and not work, so instead of feeling shattered and grumpy we arrived to a perfectly glorious spring day, full of joy and looking forward to getting home to the farm and the dogs. This evening, at sunset, I put on the running shoes and went out onto the mountain with the dogs. Since we left it has poured with rain; it must have been one of the wettest August’s ever which might be a bit miserable but produces perfect conditions for the fynbos to flower. The mountain has exploded into life since we left and we are in for a bonanza season. Any reader of The Fynbos Blog who would like to visit the farm and do a ‘flower safari’ is welcome to contact us and we will welcome you. We are in Paarl, the best time of day is sunset in good weather, though mornings are also good if we have time. You must like dogs.

Tonight the sky was glorious with colour and for once I’ve posted a sunset shot as the headline picture. All the photos on this blog are taken with my iPhone 5 and I’m so impressed with what it can do. This shot is a view of the lights of Paarl, with Table Mountain 60 kilometres away dominating the skyline in the orange light.

Peter had been up to the weir earlier today and he took the new road by the waterfall. As we set off he told me it was covered with tiny white flowers and we ran up that way to find the road, and indeed much of the farm covered with Hespertha and Geissorhiza ovate, they can look quite similar in a photo but are quite different in real life. Another common flowering bulb in the lands at the moment is the Grass lily, Chlorophytum – I’m not quite sure which subspecies this one is. When the plants are strong it looks like a tiny tree growing from the lily-like leaves.

Hesperantha

Geissorhiza ovata

Chlorophytum

There are so many flowers at this time of year that it can be a struggle to comment on each of them. Being on the mountain is amazing; it is covered in flowers; I post only the new things I see, or if I get a particularly lovely shot of an old friend. I’ll group all the flowering bulbs together, they are always particularly lovely, and shrubs, daisies and so on separately.

This is today’s collection – not all of which I have identified yet.

Pterygodium catholicum – the Cowled Friar

Unidentified

Moraea miniata

Unidentified

Oxalis obtusa – the Yellow-eyed Sorrel, has suddenly appeared, massed and common all over the farm

Lachenalia

And some shrubs and daisies

Adenandra villosa

Polygala

To be identified

Unidentified daisy

Balmy days and foggy nights

Posted on August 18, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

We’ve been having exceptionally warm and sunny weather for the time of year. Although we quite often get an early burst of spring in August, this is really warm – 28 degrees or even higher yesterday and we are still in t-shirts today. The combination of warmth and damp in spring often means foggy patches and a favourite sight is the view from the farm on a foggy morning. We had one breathtaking dawn moment as the full moon set behind Paarl mountain and the fog lapped at the foothills. The moon is never as spectacular in a photo, this one was huge and round and dominated the morning sky.

Moon setting over Paarl

The Lobostemon fruticosus has burst into flower. The dull light brings out the best in it; it has a luminous glow. And sometimes the very first rays of sun just catch the flowers so they are lit from within. The colour ranges from pink to pale blue and the small shrubs are covered in a mass of flowers. We have them everywhere. I have tried to transplant them into the garden but even the small ones have a deep deep tap root that I haven’t succeeded in transplanting intact, so they shrivel and die. Never mind, they clearly prefer the mountain.

Lobostemon fructicosus

It quite often happens that I notice something in a particular area and think of it as rare and special only to find out a few days later that it is all over the farm. This pretty yellow shrub is one of those. I initially didn’t recognise it, and then was quite excited to realise when I had a good look at the photos that it was probably another Hermannia, like the ones we saw last week. Rushed to the book, looked up the Hermannias and sure enough it’s Hermannia althaeifolia, quite a common plant in the region and also used extensively in gardens. Not surprising, it’s a lovely thing. The photo in the reference book isn’t very good though, so I went to iSpot for some clarification and checking those images there can be no doubt.

Hermannia althaeifolia

iSpot is the place for geeks when it comes to fynbos. They ask us to post what we see and I don’t do it enough, but if I can’t identify something, there is always a far more knowledgeable person on iSpot who will. This little white flowering bulb for instance, which I posted a couple of blogs ago, has been identified as Ixia. They were not sure which subspecies, and I can’t find it in any of my reference books, but reading into the more detailed description of the Ixia, I can see what they mean.

Ixia

I don’t know what this absolutely charming white Erica is. There are some serious Erica experts on iSpot though, so I shall post it and see what we come up with.

White Erica

A couple of pelargoniums – the first one is not really spectacular as the photo isn’t very good – but it’s one I haven’t posted yet this year. The other is another, pelargonium myrrhifolium varr myrrhifolium, a pelargonium I posted a couple of weeks ago, from a different plant on a different part of the farm.