The Fynbos Blog

Springtime – Pelargoniums, Proteas and Polygalas

Posted on October 14, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Last week was a bad week for running with the dogs. I’d hurt my leg and I had to go to Johannesburg on business and then when finally I was motivated to get out there, it rained. But on Friday evening friends came to do a “flower safari” and it is always wonderful to see the mountain through their eyes – the wild beauty of it and the spectacular blooming of the fynbos all the more marvellous.

Sunday morning came with glorious sunshine, the dogs’ tails were wagging in anticipation and there were no excuses or reasons to avoid an hour of excercise interspersed with photography. The morning light as the sun slants over the mountain lends itself beautifully to photos, so we were up at a reasonable hour and the four of us panted up the hill.

I probably repeat this too often, but although this is the 42nd blog this year, I have seen something completely new every single time I’ve been up the mountain and I know I’ve missed flowers as well. Shrubs tend to bloom for a while, but flowering bulbs sometimes have only a brief moment of glory and the saddest thing is to come back from a trip, head up the moutain and see the withered shape of some lovely thing that we shan’t see again until 2014.

Yesterday we saw old friends and some completely new flowers. The first to greet us was this coral-pink protea. The buds have been there for ages and the anticipation was worth the wait when it finally bloomed. It could be Protea eximia, the large leaves with a distinctive border and the black tips of the outer petals seem indicative.

Protea eximia

There are quite a few of these gorgeous fluffy white flowers just below the area we call the lookout and I think it might be Stilbe vestita.

Stilbe vestita

Some flowers really create the feel of the mountain as there are prolific flowering shrubs all over the place. I should do a blog dedicated to them. I caught a lovely image of one, Oftia africana, on Sunday.

Oftia africana

This pretty blue flowering bulb has been present in the same part of the farm as the Stilbe vestita and I’m also not sure what it is. Further research will probably find it though, as I have lots of books on bulbs, but not always the time to read them before I post the blog.

This white erica is really amazing – in one small part of the farm it has taken over and at this time of year there is a carpet of tiny white blooms – spectacular. It’s a flat Erica that grows close to the ground.

Spreading white erica

The white Erica in close up

Another Erica we love to see is this one. It resembles several in the books, most closely abietina which one of my books says grows only on Table Mountain. A close relation perhaps? In any case it seems to flower for most of the year, with a brief break only over the worst of the winter months.

An Erica related to abietina?

From time to time I post a photograph of the many Pelargoniums on our slopes, they are prolific, there is a variety of subspecies but not that I can identify for certain.

Pelargonium

Strangely the same is true for this gladioli. You really would think that something so very common and prolific would be easy to identify. I often struggle with gladioli and for this one I have been through the Encyclopedia of Cape Bulbs several times. The flowers are pink when in bud and turn pure white as they flower. On the bottom petals there is a hint of yellow. They are prolific and flower everywhere the slopes are damp.

Gladiolus – strangely unidentified

A while ago I posted a blog entitled The Red Protea, fascinated by these red “flowers” that were growing on a protea bush. It turns out that it’s the new growth of the lovely Protea nitida (see the Protea page for a picture of the lovely Protea nitida in full bloom). Here is the very beginning of that new growth – it does indeed look like a flower in bud.

The new growth of Protea nitida

This flower, growing on a damp road right at the very top of the farm is clearly a member of the pea family, though unidentified at present.

Another member of the pea family is Polygala. There are quite a few of these and I’m not sure which one we have here but they are prolific in quite a few areas of the farm during the spring months. The little white fringe confirms the identification as Polygala.

Polygala

Finally, also at the top of the farm, we saw the first flower of Scabiosa columbaria. Part of the charm of this flower is that it can survive the hot weather and will continue to flower all the way through the summer months when not much else is happening.

Scabiosa columbaria

An evening walk in the fynbos

Posted on October 7, 2013 by fynbosblog One comment

No sooner does the weather improve when I slip in the gym, pull a muscle quite badly and can’t run. Which is not good for the purposes of identifying and recording all our flowers. This evening I really had to get up onto the mountain so I took the car and followed by the loyal hounds went up the mountain to see what’s happening. As always it’s stunning up there – we never get bored the dogs and I. They rush around investigating old smells and new, putting up the odd gerbil or francolin. I am endlessly fascinated by the changes I see, no sooner has something disappeared than something new takes its place.

I stopped on the way up to take a better picture of the Pterygodium catholicum, the little orchid known as the cowled monk. The summer southeaster that howls over us in dry clear weather has begun and it makes it hard to capture flowers close up as they quiver in the wind. So we may get a better picture on a still day, but on the other hand, they fade quickly and by then they may be gone.

Pterygodium catholicum

All over the mountain the Felicia is out. I’m not quite certain of the identification but it’s most likely Felicia aethiopica.

Felicia aethiopica

Felicia aethiopica in close up

This starry flower, which I once confidently identified as Geissorhiza ovata is perhaps Hesperantha cucullata. It could be.It seems more likely when I look in detail at the flowers and leaves. Frustrating when they are so prolific, identification should be easy but it is not.

Hesperantha cucullata?

Another flower that’s hard to identify is this little thing. Quite small, it grows all over the place in little clumps of spikes with these fuzzy white or pinkish white flowers on the tips. When you photograph the flowers in close up they are amazing, like bunches of roses. This is quite high magnifications, so the pictures are not crystal clear but it gives you a sense of the extraordinary precision of nature. The detail is amazing. It is quite prolific but though I’ve looked and looked I cannot find it in the books.

Unidentified pinkish white flowers

The flower head

Seen at even more of a close up – you can see that each tiny bud is like a miniature rose

I love this Erica. I can’t identify it, but these coral flowers will last all summer – Erica’s flower for months on end, it’s part of their charm. When I get a specialist book on Ericas I will identify it more correctly.

Coral flowered Erica

As we stood at the top of the farm in the fading light Jemina Chew stood on the path among the flowers, looking around, enjoying the evening.

Jemima Chew pauses to enjoy the evening

And as the sun slipped behind Paarl mountain, it still lit the shimmering misty space between us and Table Mountain and Table Mountain glowed pinkly 60 kilometres away through the evening air.

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The Red Protea

Posted on October 1, 2013 by fynbosblog One comment

While the blog and the running help to motivate one another, the profusion of flowers has taken over and I’ve been spending too much time taking photos of flowers and not nearly enough doing the actual running. So this week I’ve been determined to run harder and hoping to get out at another time of day for the flowers.

Next week I’ll focus more on the blog. In the meantime I did stop to capture this unusual flower, which has come out near the waterful. I’m not quite sure what it is – Protea? Leucadendron? I can’t find it in the book.

The weather is vastly improved and spring has definitely arrived. The proof? The farm echoes with the call of the red chested cuckoo – known as the Piet-my-vrou, in reference to its distinctive call. It’s a migratory bird and arrives with the heat in springtime.

I also couldn’t resist stopping on the drive to capture the Leucospermum linaere who’s graceful fronds have grown down the slope to eye-level. This plant has obviously enjoyed the quantities of rain – I’ve never seen so many flowers on it.

Leucospermum linaere or The Vulnerable

An orchid known as the Cowled Friar

Posted on September 29, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

I’m sitting in the back of a 737 as I write this. I should be writing reports for work but my flight was delayed and I’ve been shunted onto a different, very full plane. My work is rather confidential and there’s no room, so I might as well write about flowers as we fly over snow-tipped mountains towards hot Johannesburg.

With the bad weather behind us the mountain is finally reveling in a blast of spring weather. Birds everywhere hopefully breeding like mad, bees humming and fynbos plants doing what they do best, covering themselves in stunning flowers.

Everytime we set off in a new direction we find new things. Peter and I went for an evening walk with the dogs a couple of days ago and we took a steep path that goes up the bank behind the house. These yellow orchids were all over that piece of land, though I haven’t yet seen them anywhere else. It is Pterygodium catholicum, and its common name, very charmingly, is the Cowled friar. I particularly love the red splashes on the petals. Although these are not uncommon, to the best of my knowledge, there is always something very special about orchids and it is lovely to see them growing so close to the house.

Pterygodium catholicum

There are clumps of this very pretty white shrub all over the place. I will pick some when I get home and do a more thorough analysis but it looks very much like Agthomsa capensis, a member of the buchu famlily that is quite common all over the Cape. The good thing about these plants is that the leaves have quite a distinctive smell – the book says that these are “sweet smelling”, which certainly is not the case with the pungent leaves of Agthomsa betulina and crenulata that we grow commercially on the farm. That should make identification quite easy to confirm.

Agthomsa capensis

This rambling and rather strange flower is not in my fynbos books – is it a weed?

Here it is again, rambling in a cultivated part of the farm among the lupins, again raising suspicions about its authentic fynbos origins.

Another pea-like flower grows in wilder parts but I can’t identify it.

Somebody please put me out of my misery and tell me what this yellow shrub is? It sprawls untidily by the woodpile at the edge of the olives. There are several of them there although I haven’t seen them anywhere else. It has been in flower for quite a few weeks but I’ve struggled to take a good photo of it – the flowers are at the tip of a long stem and it waves in the slightest breeze. That evening it was dead calm and these pale flowers are easier to capture as the light fades so I got a good shot of it.

As the light failed we walked into an area where I rarely go, it’s off the beaten track for running and we don’t visit it enough. There is an amazing view through the trees down towards the dams of Nederburg with the Paarderberg mountain in the background.

When we crossed over the dam wall to the house I stopped and captured the Carpobrotus edulis that sprawls there. A succulent that loves these conditions and is common all over the Cape, these yellow flowers fade to pink as they age and I will try to capture that.

Yesterday morning I got up early to run with the dogs. It was a busy day and I promised myself I would concentrate on running, not flowers. As we ran down the drive the first rays of sun caught the Simonsberg and the light was magical, so we stopped to capture that moment.

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Lilies and peacocks: prolific flowering on the mountain

Posted on September 24, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Lilies and peacocks: prolific flowering on the mountain.

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Lilies and peacocks: prolific flowering on the mountain

Posted on September 23, 2013 by fynbosblog 3 comments

When you wake up morning after morning and the first thing you hear is the thudding of rain on the zinc roof it is not really conducive to getting out on the farm to run and photograph flowers. Even the dogs stand at the doorway and barely want to get their feet wet.

The weather finally improved on Sunday and late in the day we finally got out onto the mountain. There is so much out there, the rain has made flowering prolific and the frustration is that we must have missed so many flowers that have had their brief moment of glory and disappeared.

There is something about this mountain at the end of the day, as the light fades to the east and the last glow of sunlight flares in a spectacular display of light and colour. There is one huge tree, a bluegum or Eucalyptus that stands in splendid isolation high on the mountain. An alien, it doesn’t belong here and I cannot imagine how it came to survive so high; it must have found a spot where it is slightly sheltered from the howling winds. This evening it made a frame for the setting sun.

As we descended I caught this shot of the mountains behind us caught in spectacular orange.

Before us the sun was just about to go down behind Paarl mountain and you can see the mist gathering over the Berg River at the bottom of the valley.

The light was perfect as we ran up the mountain and captured flowers. There are many that flower like this, at the top of a spike of needle or threadlike leaves and this is a lovely one that we found right at the top of the farm. I couldn’t find it in the book and generally these are hard to identify.

Unidentified spike

Another beautiful spikey thing is this white one. Again I haven’t identified it yet – it’s gone into the unidentified folder for when I have some more books and helps.

White spikes unidentified

While on the theme of unidentified shrubs, here’s another one. In one damp and quite shady place there are lots of these, little shrubs covered in white flowers, pretty enough to be cultivated in any garden. And indeed they probably are – so if any reader knows what they are please do let me know.

White flowering shrub

The waterfall is pounding away and my theory that at some point it will be flooded with evening sunshine seems likely to come true as the sun needs to be just a little higher and a little further to the south and the whole fall will be lit up for a few weeks.

I had a lot more luck identifying the flowering bulbs and there are lots of them. Just behind the house the bank is full of these brilliant blue flowers, Geissorhiza aspera.

Geissorhiza aspera

And just above it the bank and many roads on the farm are littered with these white stars. I think it might be Strumaria spiralis but I do need to check as the identification is not 100 % confirmed.

Identity uncertain

I am completely sure of this one however. It is Baeometra uniflora, known as the Beetle Lily and there are plenty of them in damp areas at the top of the farm.

Baeometra uniflora – the Beetle LIly

This was a busy run, a lot of flowers needing recording and worrying about more weather to come, and a lot more flowers, I wanted to be sure we’d capture them. One I saw during a quick morning run in the week, in between the showers, is this lovely little pink spike and I was worried that it might have disappeared by the time I got back to that part of the farm again with good light and time to do a long run. But no, here it is and it is known as a Spike Lily, Wurmbea punctata. I love it when we get a really clear identification of something new and there is no doubt about this one.

Wurmbea punctata – the Spike Lily

Another absolutely unmistakable flower and always a treat when they appear, as if out of nowhere, is the lovely Spiloxene Capensis, one of the Cape stars and known as the Peacock flower. We were rewarded by this sight at the very top of yesterday’s climb and before the light abandoned us.

Spiloxene capensis – the Peacock flower

This was much harder to identify and I think it must be the Grass Lily, Chlorophytum rigidum perhaps? It has a very localised habitat and this is exactly the right area. But the picture in the book isn’t great so I would be happy to be corrected.

Chlorophytum rigidum?

Weather and spring flowers

Posted on September 15, 2013 by fynbosblog One comment

When you live in the Western Cape and you want to live an outdoor life, you need a certain amount of faith in the weather forecasters. My preferred forecaster is http://www.yr.no, the Norwegian weather service. Don’t ask me why they should be so good, but they are, and at a very local level. Yesterday they said that although it would rain most of the morning here on the mountain in Paarl, in Stellenbosch it would be clear from 9 am to midday. So although the rain was pounding down on the farm roof when I woke up at six am, I confidently went with my horses to a show and didn’t get wet at all. This morning on the other hand, the forecast predicted torrential rain all morning, clearing later in the day. I took myself off to the office and knocked off some overdue work until about 4pm, and as the rain dried up, went out for a run with the dogs. Perfect.

I can never really believe that we’ll find still more new things when we go out, even when I haven’t been out for a while. But now I know that, at this time of year at least I am missing things by not getting out more often. The farm was glowing in the grey, transparent, late afternoon light. We first came across some weeds in the cultivated land. I don’t know the name of this purple weed but you see it everywhere at this time of year in cultivated parts of the Cape. I’ve read a great saying that a weed is any plant growing where you don’t want it to grow and it is certainly true of this quite pretty, but unloved flower.

The other weed that is not a fynbos flower yet I still enjoy is this simple Lupin. I believe it may be South American in origan, though I might be quite wrong about that. It grows in and around the olives and doesn’t seem to invade the fynbos, so we forgive it and allow it to flourish where it pleases.

There are so many new fynbos flowers to record and not easily identifible. I have some work to do here and will post a few with detail to come later. But first here is Salvia africana-caerulea which grows enthusiastically all over the farm. I very nearly had a row with a far more knowledgeable gardner and botanist, garden designer, and above all a great friend, who brought us to see his wonderful new garden in Stellenbosch this week. He told me that one particular Salvia he’d planted was Salvia africana. It can’t be, blurted I, because it has brown flowers. Salvia african has blue flowers. I can assure you, he replied, that Salvia africana has brown flowers. Well, thank goodness for the reference books. There are TWO Salvia africanas, one, Salvia africana-lutea has brown flowers. Salvia african-caerulea which grows wild on the sandstone slopes of the Western Cape has indeed got blue flowers. Phew.

Salvia african-caerulea

There are moments of beauty that stay in ones mind forever and one special view in this marvellous Stellenbosch garden was such a moment. You look down through some magnificent old and new planting to a road far below and that road which leads off into the unknowable distance is lined with magnificent borders of indigenous planting, and on the dirt road, scattered randomly yet forming a path that draws you onward, are hundreds of yellowy-orange Namaqualand daisies, sown by Henk. A moment of absolute magic, one of the loveliest sights I have ever seen.

Back on the farm, more prosaically I was hoping the Lachenalia would still be around and found plenty growing on the roads at the top of the farm. I cannot exactly identify them, these dont fit the descriptions in my book so I have to take it to the encyclopedia, along with a number of today’s collection.

Lachenalia – subspecies to be confirmed

This magnificent spike of pink Erica was worth recording, if only for its unusual shape.

Erica

All over the Cape the Arum lilies are flourishing and we see them in unusual places here on the farm as well. They love these ultra damp conditions. I photographed this one right at the top of the farm near a spot we call the lookout – a place where I have never before seen Arum lilies grow.

Arum Lily

Quite a few flowers I saw today are difficult to identify and need more work. So I am posting them for the record We will find names for them another day

The light was amazing while we were out today, glowing towards the rest and shining off the overloaded dams in the valley at Buffet Olives and Nederburg.

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Glorious Sunday Fynbos Flowers

Posted on September 9, 2013 by fynbosblog One comment

After a golden day on Saturday when we were out all day with no time to run on the farm, we finally set off late on Sunday morning, the dogs and I. Just as we left the house a light drizzle began to fall and I went back, wisely as it turned out, for a rain jacket. It was only drizzling as we ran down the drive and then started to climb, but by the time we got high on the farm the weather had closed in. Somehow this line of pines with the dams below always seems a little Japanese to me – is that an odd thought here in the uplands of Paarl? Perhaps it is.

The landscape Japaned by the mist and the light

Luckily the weather hadn’t deterred us and some flowers glow and seem to photograph even better in the rain. Take this Cyphia volubilis, the delicate white creeper. There is one on the drive that is climbing all the way up this unidentified and rather plain shrub.

Cyphia volubis

A close up reveals the charm and beauty of this delicate flower, notice the tiny pink spots at the centre, and of course the drops of rain, proof of our damp run.

Cyphia volubilis – detail

All over the farm these yellow shrubs are flowering profusely, it is Hermannia grossularifolia I believe; there are as many as 60 fynbos subspecies but this one looks right, it belongs on these sandstone slopes and is flowering at exactly the right time of year.

Hermannia grossularifolia

Another flowering shrub is this one that I’ve posted before, unidentified until a friend pointed out that it is the common Tickberry (thank you Gilly), which used to be called Chrysanthemoides monilifera but is now correctly identified as Osteospermum moniliferum. This shrub, although included as fynbos, is not unique to the fynbos region but grows happily, wild and in gardens, all the way up to tropical Africa.

Osteospermum moniliferum

An oft-posted winter flower was the wild rosemary, Eriocephalus africanus and I though it would be interesting to post it now that it has gone to seed. With so many seedheads one can understand why it is so prolific on the mountain.

Eriocephalus africana – gone to seed

The light lent itself perfectly to capturing the magnificent white Erica which I believe to be the plukenetii. It could be the coccinea, but the book says that particular subspecies does not exist in white and this is most definitely white. Magnificent with its protruding anthers. This is a common Erica and occurs all over the farm in many colours.

Erica plukenetii (?)

At this time of year the lands are full of flowers among the buchu. The overall effect can be hard to photograph although this field of senecio high up in the lands gives a good sense of the colour and effect even on a dark day.

The lands full of flowers, primarily Senecio

Saving the best for last. One of the loveliest sights on the farm occurs at this time of year when this particular Leucadendron turns coral coloured. One of the interesting things about the Leucadendron family is that although less flashy than the protea to which it is related, it tends to be highly localised, fussy and choosy about where any particular subspecies will grow. This appears to be Leucadendron tinctum, the name giving away the remarkable change in colour at this time of year. The shrubs are everywhere in the higher parts of the farm and the effect is magnificent, one of our all time favourites.

The magnificent Leucadendron tinctum

I hsd planned a long run covering most of the farm, but by the time we reached what we call the look out it was raining heavily, I was tired slow and a bit sore after a lot of travel and show jumping on Saturday. The dogs were soaked and had been very patient as I took photos on the way up, not that they care, they happily sniff and hunt although Seamus, who misses us when we are gone, never left my side. So we put away thoughts of fynbos and plodded a little wearily down the hill to lunch, a fire and an afternoon in front of the TV.

After the rain…

Posted on September 6, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

What a joy to be home, even though our trip was to lovely Ireland, home of many fans of The Fynbos Blog. On the evening we got back what a lovely sight greeted us in the grass just above the house – glittering with hundreds of snowy white stars of Gheissorhiza ovata. They are flowering in profusion after the rain. While I was in Ireland I got a new lens for my iphone camera that allows better close-ups and this is the first result.

Geissorhiza ovata

To get a better idea of the shape of this charming and profilic flowering bulb here is the whole plant.

Geissorhiza ovata

This pelargonium grows by the road just above the house. We didn’t have to go far to find new things. As usual with Pelargonium I don’t know the subspecies though we love them and have sucessfully transplanted quite a few into the garden.

Pelargonium – subspecies unknown

This small dam is known as James’s Lake – we created it in my father’s memory and it looked lovely in the evening light.

James’s Lake

Jemima Chew and Maebh went hunting in this field of buchu scattered with fynbos just behind James’s Lake. One of the joys of farming a fynbos plant like buchu is that it flourishes best when it grows with it’s fynbos friends and though we have to stop them from taking over the buchu, the lands are fully of wild plants as well as those we’ve cultivated.

Jemima Chew and Maebh hunting in the buchu lands

Wet weather finds in the fynbos

Posted on August 31, 2013 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

The weather and our travel arrangements have played against the Fynbos Blog for the last couple of weeks. We are in Ireland for a short holiday visiting friends and family. The Cape may seem green in winter but nothing compares to the overwhelming lush greenness of the Irish countryside.

Meanwhile in the Cape everything flowering and especially the bulbs seems to thrive in the wet wet weather. At this time of year the Arum lilies line the roads whereever there is a bit of damp or water. I have never seen them more prolific than this year – the verges are shining with white trumpets set in the glossy greenness of their leaves. Extraordinary that this magnificent flower should be so very common here.

Before we left I did manage to go up to the top of the farm between the torrents of rain and of course were new and exciting flowers to photograph, even though we only had a few minutes. The Babinia fragrens is everwhere, like all the bulbs it is loving this wet spring and the blue flashes are everywhere.

Babinia fragrens

I haven’t been able to identify this rather tatty yellow flower – it may not be looking its best after the rain but the honeybee doesn’t seem to mind. The leaf shape is very distinctive but I can’t make a certain identification in the books anything that looks similar seems to belong in sandy flats while we have sandstone and granite slopes so it is the wrong habitat.

Unidentified yellow flower

Meanwhile this lovely white flower is scattered all over the lower lands. This is a very common garden flower and I always thought it was Osteospermum but the book calls it Dimorphoteca nudicalus.

Dimorphoteca nudicalis

It’s exciting when we make a clear identification of an old and frequently seen friend and this one is Geissorhiza ovata – we see it all over the farm, it’s a stunning fynbos bulb that puts out this little white stars. There are 80 fynbos subspecies of Geissorhize so I hope we find more of these charming flowers.

Geissorhiza ovata

Another very summer flower is this Cyphia volubilis, a twining perennial creeper which is very common all over the farm. The delicate pretty white flowers are everywhere at the moment, often woven in to the depths of shrubby fynbos, so although they are common, they are not so easy to photograph and this was a lucky shot in good light. The flowers themselves are quite small, about the size of my thumbnail, or just a little bigger.

Cyphia volubilis

We ran out of time and had to get back to pack for Ireland. The weather has been appalling since we left, so we wouldn’t have much to photograph and I’m hoping that some warmth and sunshine might arrive which will cause a profusion of flowering in perfect time for our return next week. Meanwhile I am hoping to put up some new pages with collections of some of the larger groups of subspecies.