The Moraea tripetala is probably the first fynbos bulb to captivate me all those years ago. I was running down the drive and couldn’t believe this tiny Iris-like flower growing prolifically along the bank. The larger petals are smaller than my thumbnail and the colours are exquisite. Of course I wanted to know what it was, I started noticing other flowers and out of that has come this passion for fynbos.
Moraea tripetala
We had a fabulous weekend of running, the dogs and I. First of all because as it was the weekend we could set off later in the day and have better light for photos. All this running has helped with fitness so I’ve been bounding up the mountain and really enjoying running. It’s a great feeling. And then we STILL see something new every time. I can never believe that we will – especially if I’ve seen two or three really interesting new flowers the previous day. Suddenly to see half a dozen more because we take a slightly different route, or I just open my eyes or look left rather than right and there it is, something completely new.
Like this Salvia africana-caerulea – I really love this photo, because it is a perfect record of the shrub which makes it very easy to identify correctly. And then you can see Seamus in the distance, making his way up the mountain while I stop for yet another picture.
Salvia africana-caerulea
It was windy on Saturday and Seamus loves the wind – here he is standing in his very favourite spot on the farm, holding his face up to the wind blowing off the mountain.
Seamus enjoying the wind
Then we came across this which I think is a Gazania rigida – again the leaves are right and the description of the dark and hairy involucre fits. That’s the dark splashes at the bottom of the petals in layman’s terms. Stunning flowers.
Gazania rigida
This little lilac and white flower isn’t a bulb but grows on a shrub, I haven’t found it at all in the books so it’s gone in the “unidentified folder” in the hopes that further research will reward us with some names. Very pretty and the little shrub is covered in them, so I imagine it’s quite a common garden plant – if anyone knows it, please comment.
Unknown flowering shrub
I thought the Oxalis had done their thing. They are still with us – their flowering season is wonderfully long. Then suddenly the whole farm is covered in these peach coloured Oxalis which are absolutely charming. I think it might be Oxalis obtusa though it is hard to be certain.
Oxalis obtusa?
The magnificent King Protea is in flower and I’ve already posted it as “Flower of the Day”. Here’s a different photo – note the bee – the absolutely love the proteas. We have a wonderful relationship with a local beekeeper who puts hives on the farm and makes fynbos honey. That’s what he pays us in and we have a constant supply of delicious honey from the farm.
Protea cynaroides – The Kind Protea
When I saw this pink shrub I thought it was an Erica with particularly profuse flowers. But it looks very like Muraltia scoparia, a purple gorse that grows on the West Coast. That makes it very unlikely that it grows here. When I get out next I shall investigate and verify. It is amazing.
Muraltia scoparia
As I came back from looking at the pink shrub, I came across this pea-like flower with distinctive white tufts. It’s quite low growing and discrete and grows in an area where Peter has cleared the alien trees from the riverbed above the waterfall. I think it is probably a little Polygala though I’m not sure which one. It is very distinctive so when I do find it we’ll be able to identify it clearly.
Polygala?
Oftia
Erica with tiny white bell-like flowers
Unidentified yellow flowering fynbos shrub
Microloma tenuifolia
Microloma tenuiffolia
Lebostemum with blue flowers
Leucodendrum
I have been away too much over the past few weeks and am overjoyed to be back on the farm for a few weeks before I have to do any serious travel again. The last post talked about the Bulbinia fragens, the harbinger of spring. Spring here does not arrive over many weeks as it does in Europe. Within one unseasonably warm week I have returned to find the farm full of new flowers. This is building up to the height of the flowering season for Fynbos and the next few months are going to see an explosion of life. I’m already struggling to keep up – this blog will be quite long and I’ll be trying to keep regular posts so that we capture as much as possible of what’s happening on the mountain.
I’ve been looking out for this flower – it’s a dear friend, one of the first that made me realise the special nature of our fynbos bulbs. This photo is quite deceptive as this is a tiny iris-like flower – each petal not much bigger than my fingernail. This is Moraea tripelata and it has started to flower all over the farm. I spotted it first thing when I went running with the dogs on Saturday morning.
Moraea tripetala
Peter then took us up to see the work he’s been doing clearing alien vegetation, especially the Port Jackson trees that choke the river. Every winter when the planting on the farm is done he attached this for a few weeks. Two winters ago we cleared around the waterfall and what was a chocked up watercourse that you couldn’t see is now full of vibrant fynbos life. He has just opened up this area, so dense with trees that you couldn’t get into it and has found the spot where the two rivers that run through the farm meet, before tumbling down the mountain to add their waters to the mighty Berg River that runs through the Paarl valley below us.
Clearing alien trees along the river
The place where the two rivers meet
In the late afternoon I took some guests on our first “Flower safari” of the year. All we did was walk down the front drive and we were enchanted with the profusion of flowers we came across, many old friends that we have posted before, and quite a few new ones.
First of all we came across this tiny white gladiolus. I first saw it at the top of the bank, which gives an idea of scale.
Unknown gladiolus
Then I realised they are growing along the side of the road. I cannot find this one in my book at all – not even in the bulb encyclopedia. I’ve done this before, failed to identify a flower and then realised I’m not looking properly at the description, so if I do realise what it is, I’ll post it. It is quite enchanting, with a delicate fragrance, like so many of the gladioli.
Gladiolus unidentified
Then we came across another example of the bell like pink Erica that I posted last week, this time a lot closer to home.
Erica with pink bells
There are masses of these on the drive, and masses of what I guess to be Erica daphniflora, in colours of green, white, red and a particularly vibrant pink.
Erica, probably daphniflora
Erica, probably daphniflora
The Oxalis are still flowering away, these ones in white and pink profuse along the bank and the lands still covered in the yellow ones.
Oxalis
The next new find was this Erica – you can see it’s quite distinctive in the way it grow and flowers and the little white bells have the brown anthers exposed at the end. This was very attractive in the late evening light.
Erica, unidentified
Another new find is this flowering shrub which is common all over the farm. I have always assumed it to be Cape Confetti, but with my evolving botannical eye I think it is more likely to be Adenandra villas, possily . I’m sure I will have many more occassions to photograph this stunning shrub.
Cape confetti – coleonem album or adenandra villas?
As I was showing our guests one of the Protea nerifolias along the road we saw this little bud. We were delighted as it means these glorious proteas are going to continue to flower for some time.
The bud of a Protea nerifolia
The Felicia is such a wonderful flower. This is the first one I have seen this year and it will flower from now until the summer, along with the Lobostemum it is one of our commonest shrubs. That makes the first sighting of these pretty lilac flowers with their yellow centres no less exciting, both for their own sake and the promise of more spring flowers to come.
Felicia filifolia
This warm weather won’t be with us for long, with temperatures expected to plummet during the week. Luckily up here on the mountain we almost never go below 5 degrees, so the flowers will be safe. In the valley below it can freeze, but the moutain seems to hold the heat of summer and protects us from the coldest weather.
We are coming into the best season for sunsets. Yet another amazing sunset this evening as I was finishing some more traditional gardening and the mountains behind turned a glorious orangey-pink.
in
I got home on Tuesday morning and of course my first thought was to get up on the mountain and see new flowers though I didn’t achieve it until late in the day.
Every year as we reach the end of July, the coldest and wettest six weeks of the Cape year, a flower emerges that is for me the harbinger of spring. Like hearing the first cuckoo, I always note where and when I see the first Babinia fragrens. These crocus-like flowers cover the farm, they are everywhere – and the bulbs are particularly loved by porcupines. Last year I was running up a steep hill on the farm when I came across a 300 metre stretch of road where a happy porcupine had wandered up and dug up every single plant to munch on the bulbs. There are plenty to share and it was fun to think of him happily crunching not far from the house in the night as we slept.
Babinia Fragens, the first of the year
Next up was this delicate white flower. I didn’t get a great picture of it – I think it’s a Cape Snowflake, to give it it’s common name, but will pop it into the research folder and see if we can get a better shot. These are quite common so I’m sure we’ll see more.
Opposite the Cape Snowflake, the water was tumbling in huge volumes down the waterfall in the evening sunlight – there’s been a lot of rain while I’ve been away.
One of the other wonderful sights of late winter and early spring is the Lebostemum. Another very common flowering shrub which flowers now and for several months. I have tried several times to transplant these to the garden, but they have a long fragile tap root and even very young ones invariably die. They are magnificent shrubs and flower in blue, pink or anything inbetween.
Lobostemon fructicosus
We wanted a good view of the sunset and went to the highest point of the farm on a road we don’t often run. This wonderful combination of Protea nerifolia and Protea nitida blocked our route at one point and forced a detour.
Protea nerifolia and Protea nitida in the evening light
On the detour we came across this stunning Erica with little pink bell-like flowers in full bloom. Pink ericas with bell-like or urn-like flowers are like yellow daisies, there are an aweful lot of them and they are hard to tell apart. Thanks due to Jemima Chew who stood behind them, making them much easier to photograph!
One of the many ericas that flowers with a tiny pink bell-like flower
The Cape Sugarbirds are in full mating feathers at the moment and they are having a lovely time in areas where the proteas are thickest. Their tails are so long they can hardly fly – that’s the males of course, the females look drab and take their pick. I haven’t yet managed to get a really good shot of one but hopefully it’s a matter of time.
I don’t believe we have posted and recorded this protea which is now in full flower.
Protea – indentification will be confirmed in a further posting
Finally – another sunset. As dusk gathers and the sun sets you can see the mist from the Berg River gathering on the valley floor. No wind, the light is stunning and in the far distance table mountain and the whole of Cape Town is covered by a dark wall of cloud. The rain is coming.
This morning’s surprise is this lovely Pelargonium. When I’ve had a series of new sightings I’m not necessarily expecting something new every time I go up on the mountain and I’m delighted when we (the dogs and I) come across some enchanting flower waving its petals at us in the dawn light. This is another of the mysterious Pelargoniums – I was so pleased to see this one, and thought we must be able to identify it, it’s so clear and distinctive. Well, I must tell you it is not in the book and a visit to Kirstenbosch with the hopes of a specialised book on Pelargoniums (or is it Perlargonia?) is on the cards very soon. This doesn’t appear to be in the rather good Fynbos Field Guide where 24, presumably of the most common, of the 150 fynbos subspieces occur. This farm is a source of lots of different sub-spieces of Pelargonium and Ericas. I will catalogue them and maybe work through them over time…
The farm sits on an East West Axis, and from here, 70 km away through the clear air, we see Table Mountain, behind which the sun sets in the spring and autumn months. Some nights, at any time of the year, the sun floods the mountains behind us with pink light. It’s not every night, in fact it’s not common at all. Last night I was working away at my desk when an instinct brought me out to look at the light – sure enough, pink mountains. I grabbed the iphone, ran to the dam wall, pursued by delighted dogs, and took this photo. We’ll see have better and pinker mountains to come, but this is the first I’ve captured for the blog. It’s about the flowers, but it’s not all about the flowers.
For at least four weeks I’ve been frustrated by this glorious red gladiolus.
Gladiolus watsonius
The species is easy to identify, the subspecies has been confusing; our first sighting was at the end of May and the book says it doesn’t flower until August. Even the more detailed encyclopedia says that it flowers from July to September. Furthermore it grows in clay and granite slopes in renosterveld. We have granite and sandstone slopes which is a subtle but important difference when it comes to fynbos. Over the weekend I got more serious and looked more closely – the only possible suspect was Gladiolus priorii. But Gladiolus priorii has a yellow throat and although I didn’t have a photo of the throat, I was pretty sure it’s not yellow. I couldn’t really bring myself to believe that we have a previously unidentified Gladiolus on the far, tempting though it might be.
Today I picked one.
It had fallen over a bit on the bank above the drive, it’s a bit tatty and it was time to take this whole process of identification a bit more seriously. And I can reveal that Gladiolus watsonius has one particular distinction. The lowermost leaf is narrow and H shaped in cross-section. No I didn’t get the scalpel out – I’m not that much of a geek yet. It’s pretty obvious just looking at it.
The lowermost leaf of Gladiolus watsonius
We have a positive identification – it may be the wrong time of year, it may not be quite the right soil-type but there is no doubt: Gladiolus watsonius likes Du Toitskloof and it likes our farm. It flowers when it chooses to and it’s not going to change, so the sages who write the books may need to change a word or two.
Gladiolus watsonius
Stachys aethiopica
Gladiolus – unamed
An ancient Ilex Mitis with its feet in a permanent stream
Jemima Chew enjoying the water in the weir
Protea – probably nitida
Protea nerifolia – a very pale pink specimen
Urisinia palaecea
Not everything is easily identified. This little clump of yellow daisy-like flowers is lovely and quite distinctive but I can find no record of them. Suggestions welcome.
A mystery flower – yellow daisy-like flowers are the hardest to identify
As we ran into the forest the path is lined with Leucadendron salignum. There are hundreds of these all over the farm. At this time of year they glow in the dark, another plant that seems to absorb the sunlight and render it back to us on the darker days. Today was bright and they gleam in the early winter sun.
Leudadendron gleaming in the winter sunlight
When we moved to the farm eight years ago this little red creeper was one of the first flowers to awake my interest in fynbos. The flowers are tiny, smaller than my little fingernail and they appear suddenly in midwinter, winding around the stems of thicker fynbos. Despite their tiny size the jewel-like coral jumps out of the greenery and draws the eye. We will have them until mid-spring or later, all over the farm.
Microloma tenuifolium
We could hear the waterfall long before we saw it – with the rainfall we’ve had in June the rivers on the farm are roaring and the land feels replenished.
Pelargonium – subspecies unknown
Pelargonium
By mid-summer this sun will set far to the South of Table Mountain.
My love of botany is definitely inspired by her, and by my stepgrandmother, both of whom were dedicated and knowledgable horticulturalists. I thought of them both this evening as we descended in the gloom. Two women, one Irish, one English, both Catholic, both of whom were born in one world war and raised their children through the next. Gracious women, much loved, characters, who instilled in us both values and manners. They loved their gardens and gardening brought them together, unexpectedly and into a lifelong friendship. They admired one another and both of them would like to know they are remembered and that they continue to inspire us.
The Ericas are coming out all over the farm and I have not yet identified this one – a detailed book on Ericas as we as Pelargoniums is most definitely called for. The Erica family runs to 660 subspecies in the fynbos region, so we can’t expect to identify them all, but it will be fun to see how many we have on the farm and I will start a library page on them soon.
We have been having the most dreadful weather. Day after day with torrents of rain and low cloud on the mountain, we can barely see a flower, never mind try to photograph one in the gloom. This morning when I woke up there was silence. No rain drumming on the zinc roof. If I don’t run for a few days I feel horrible and miss it and worse, I know it will be harder when I do get out there. It’s cold, there is probably snow on the mountain above us but the thought of fresh air and happy dogs was enough to get me up and into running things. I took the precaution of wearing a rain jacket on top, in case the deluge came.
In the gloom and the early light I didn’t expect to see much and it’s true that there is nothing new. I suspect we need sunshine and a little warmth to encourage flowering. One plant that has come out in profusion is the wild rosemary. The tiny white flower is too delicate and subtle to capture in the half light of the early morning but they are everywhere and will be the subject of a future blog.
Jumping out of the gloom are the lime green leucadendrons and Maebh the wolfhoud (pronounced “mave” as in “wave”) chose to position herself photogenically behind them. I think she may be taking lessons in modeling, she’s certainly getting better at posing fetchingly for the camera.
The leucadendron was particularly stunning in the morning light – a photo of the mountain shows the green shrubs glowing in the gloomy morning.
Close ups give you an idea of this lovely wild, winter flowering shrub.
The proteas start flowering even before the rains come, typically in late March and continue for months. They love the rain and the flowers gleam white while the buds can be bright pink.
Protea Repens
Another pink protea is the nerifolia which flowers prolifically at this time of year. I went up this evening to see if the evening light would let me capture the waterfall and chanced on this one as the first rays of sunlight we’ve seen in days caught it.
Protea Nerifolia
Peter told me that with all the rain the waterfall would be looking spectacular. There is a story to this – when we bought the farm this entire area was covered in alien vegetation. We started a programme of clearing those trees, hundreds of them, and revealed an old road, which must have lead up to the pass over the mountains, and this beautiful fall of water from a permanent stream. We’ve planted some indigenous trees, continue to do the clearing and we’ve seen the most amazing resurgence of fynbos in this area. The fall is hard to photograph as it sits in a crevasse that blocks the light, you can see the shadow – at this time of year the late flash of sunlight sneaks into the crevasse and nearly catches the water, so at leasst you can get a sense of it. There must be a moment when the light is at just the right angle and I’ll endeavour to be there when it does.
It’s raining again now, but as I walked home in the last of the light the sky seemed to hold a promise of better things to come. After 10 days of almost constant rain and increasing cold we’ll welcome a little sunshine. This photo of the road that leads from the main farm down to the farmhouse wouldn’t win any prizes, but I like the gleam of wet on the road and the glimpse of blue in the sky. We need this rain in the winter, it keeps this land fertile and the more rain now, the better the spring flowers will be. The dogs and I hope for better things and brighter runs for the rest of this week.
The Fynbos Blog 