Leucadendron | The Fynbos Blog

Tag Archives: Leucadendron

An auspicious day

Posted on October 22, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

A lovely run last night at the end of an auspicious day. My nephew Beckett James Grey Mulhern was born in New York. Birthday the 21st of October; an autumn child, harvest festivals and pumkins, the trees in Ireland wonderful shades of red and gold as you drive down Wexford roads to the Opera Festival. The huge full moon. October has always been a happy month in our family.

I remembered to take a couple of whiffs of the inhaler before we left the house which meant the lungs were clear to convert oxygen as needed and we fairly bounded up the mountain in the fading evening light. As we climbed higher I could hear the baboons calling in the forest. Maebh and Jemima Chew heard them too and shot off to explore. Luckily they decided not to go too far and quickly came back to Seamus and to me as we climbed higher. I have a new weapon against wandering wolfhounds – you can see it in this photo of Leucadendron tinctum in which Meabh elegantly arranged herself in the background.

The cones of Leucodendron tinctum with Maebh in the background

The white you can see on her collar is a tracker. I found it online, it’s German, works brilliantly in South Africa and tracks your dogs live when they go missing. When the wolfhounds wander we get incredibly worried; we know they can travel a long way and dogs have been lost on this mountain more than once. Shouldn’t happen with this cute little piece of technology which links to the iPhone.

The baboons used to come down into the olive groves and even as far as the gum trees behind the house. I haven’t seen them for quite a while, they really hate the wolfhounds.

One of my favourite flowers, Aristea capitata is in full flower at the moment. There is a colony on the driveway and the blue spikes are a joy to behold.

Aristea capitata

This was one of the special evenings. No wind, the end of a hot day with a dampness in the air that cooled us as we ran higher. Lovely light. When we stopped for a drink at the weir Maebh, who was in a modeling mood today, stood in front of the Ilex Mitis as I took a photo of the white trunks gleaming in the evening light. With her dappled coat she almost disappears.

Maebh and the Ilex Mitis

Paarl holds an iconic place in the South Africa psyche and the two huge granite rocks that stand above the town to the west are unmistakable to anyone who knows the Cape. Maebh, once again, stood for a moment to watch as the sun slipped away behind the rocks, which happens just at this time of year. Soon it will be setting well to the west, over Table Mountain.

Maebh watches the sun setting over Paarl Rock

There are so many flowers in bloom that it’s hard to know where to begin. One is this tiny Pelargonium, I don’t know what it’s called but I do like the pink tinge to the end of the petals.

Pelagonium

Another is a favourite, the spikes of Microdon dubium.

Microdon dubium

Talking of dubiums, some new bulbs have emerged. This is Ornitholagum dubium. It flowers in just one place on the farm and there it flowers copiously.

Ornitholagum dubium

This one I’m less sure of – Bobartia I think, possibly Bobartia indica.

Bobatia indica

The farm is covered in this one, charmingly known as Lady’s Hand, because the petals, bent back in greeting, resemble the hand of a delicate girl waving a hello. Cyanella hyacinthoides.

Cyanella hyacinthoides

There’s a plethora of peas on the go at the moment and this is Aspalanthus cordite, unmistakable with its grumpy spiky leaves.

Aspalanthus cordite

I love this shrub – Passerina cormybosa. They are supposed to be pink and yellow, while we have some that some that seem to be white as well.

Passarina cormybosa

There is masses of Lobelia along the roads, this one I think is Lobelia coronopifolia.

Lobelia coronopifolia

Another flower that is to be found absolutely everywhere and is flourishing in the garden as well is Scabious africana. This one is particularly pretty.

Scabious africana

Uncategorized

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

A spring morning

Posted on August 3, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

On Friday evening the neighbours came to dinner and arrived early for a flower safari. Wonderful to have neighbours who love the mountain as much as we do and who appreciate how special it is. I took them on the old doctors road to see the waterfall which is pounding in its winter splendor. There are hundreds of flowers at this time of year, the wildflower spring commences long before flowers come to the garden. We discovered the old doctor’s road when Peter cleared a veritable forest of wattles along the river; they had overgrown this road and below it, a small but spectacular waterfall. Now this place is a haven for the fynbos which grew back the instant the trees were cleared.

From there we walked up to the weir, a favourite spot and much photographed for this blog because of the magic of the magnificent, ancient, white trunked Ilex Mitis trees, and then on up, above the weir and close to the top of the farm. The sun was setting behind the Paarderberg mountain; a soft mist gathered in the valley below, the evening was completely still, silent, breathless. The gentle warmth of a mild sunny winter’s day coming from the earth beneath our feet. As it grew darker the full dams in the valley gleamed the reflection of the evening sky into the stillness of the coming night. “It’s like a holy place” said Francois, “there’s something spiritual about it.”

Dinner was companionable, cheerful and as we are in wine tasting mode for Christopher’s wedding in January, a little too much drink was taken. Our guests left us late, very happy, as were we.

Perhaps a little less so the following morning when the full consequences of overindulgence emerged, but not enough to prevent me from donning the running clothes and setting off with the wolfhounds and Jemima Chew into the gloomy grey morning on a serious mission to photograph flowers for the blog. The first Babinia fragrens has appeared which is for me the harbinger of spring, and with it shrubs, little trees and tiny plants have burst into flower. I won’t post the Babinia, as there will be thousands more, I didn’t get a great photo and there is so much else to post. It rained heavily during the night, those very still evenings often indicate a change in weather and flowers were covered in raindrops. To my delight I’ve identified two new flowers that I don’t remember seeing last year and which turn out to be related. The first is Hermannia saccifera and the second is Hermannia hyssopifolia, a pretty and sizeable shrub with an unusual flower that has a pin-hole throat and this urn shaped body, called a calyx. Absolutely recognisable when I read the description, there is nothing quite like it.

Hermannia saccifera

Hermannia hyssopifolia

The Hermannia hyssopifolio grows in an area that Peter cleared last year, cutting through old fynbos and finding a large flat area where we least expected it, evidence of terracing by a farmer long ago. A stream runs through this area and shrubs and there is prolific growth along it’s banks, including this sprawling shrub with its sticky leaves and tar-like smell. It’s known as the tar pea, Bolusafra biuminosa, and grows, appropriately enough, along mountain streams.

Bolusafra bitumenosa, the tar pea

Another new identification also grows in this area, Phylica oleaefolia, with these pretty ranks of pale green, cupped flowers. This is quite a tall elegant shrub.

Philyca oleaefolia

We went down to an area where I haven’t been for a while and some of the yellow daisies are still flowering, the Athanasia trifurcata and the Osteospermum spinosum that I mentioned on a blog a couple of months ago. I love when the flower matches the book’s comments perfectly, particularly as the photos don’t always. The Athanasia trifucatum, says the book, has wedge shaped grey leaves, 3-5 toothed at the tips. If you look closely at the leaves in this photo you can clearly see the three teeth.

Osteospermum spinosum

Athanasia trifucatum

In the same place grows a tiny pelargonium, one of my favourite flowers which grows all year round in different parts of the farm. I think it’s Pelargonium myrrhifolium, var. myrrhifolium.

Pelargonium myrrhifolium varr. myrrhifolium

Along the road we walked on Friday night, which I call Erica Alley for the many varieties of Erica that make their home there, are several stunning varieties in flower. Two beautiful examples of the common Erica plukenetii, showing the range of colour, from white with very pale pink, to coral. And some with pretty pink bells in many shades, as well as this lovely white Erica where the bells grow in ranked series but which I have never identified.

Erica plunketii

Erica Plunketii

Erica with tiny pink bells

White Erica, with the flowers growing in orderly rows

A close up of the white Erica showing the tiny protruding anthers

Another pretty shrub which I have not managed to identify. The flowers are green and tiny; so tiny that a single raindrop captures several of them.

And a small tree-like shrub flowering in several places on the farm with prolific drooping flower heads, but I can’t find it in the book.

More familiar friends include Stachys aethiopica, also known as woundwort with it’s mint shaped leaves and pretty little pinky-white flowers.

Stachys aethiopica

All over the farm the buchu is in flower. Agthomsa, mostly crenulata, or a crenulata hybrid, though we also grow lots of Agthomsa betulina. Buchu, the common name, loves the sandy mountain soil and especially the north facing slopes on the farm. The flowers are mostly white but sometimes pretty shades of pink and lilac.

Agthomsa, or buchu with pink flowers

I couldn’t resist capturing Protea burchellii looking stunning in the grey morning light as well as the Leucadendron tinctum. These yellow flower heads will soon turn the most wonderful shade of coral – they are prolific on the mountain and grow in massed groups in certain areas.

Protea burchellii

Leucadendron tinctum

All in all we had a wonderful time, the dogs and I. As a run it wasn’t up to much but as a morning spent together on the mountain, it was the best of times. Maebh has boundless energy and was particularly happy to find a mongoose to chase. He is much much cleverer than she, there was never a chance of her catching him, but she was very pleased with her morning.

Maebh hunting in the olive groves, her coat dark from running in the soaking wet fynbos

Uncategorized

Roaring waters

Posted on July 21, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

We had some turbulent weather last week and I lay in bed morning after morning listening to the rain battering the roof and feeling no desire whatsoever to leave my warm, wolfhound laden bed to go running in the wet coldness outside. Thus is the road to perdition paved with good intentions. Night after night I go to bed and promise myself a morning run. Morning after morning I lie in the snug warmth and don’t go anywhere. Paths go untrodden, flowers unphotographed, dogs unexercised

On Saturday the rain stopped and in the evening we finally ran up the soaking wet mountain in poor light with little to see and charming only to us. We ran via the waterfall, roaring white in the dull evening light.

Today dawned grey once more, but no rain. We were taking the young horse to a show, so there was no chance of a morning run, but after a happy day of showjumping at Noordhoek, I came home to glorious sunshine and enthusiastic dogs. The only possible answer was to go out on the mountain. I’m not sure it could entirely be described as a run. I walked most of the uphill and we made several detours into wilder bits of fynbos to examine and inspect. The dogs were delirious with happiness, noses a-quiver and constantly dashing off into the bush after wild things, real or imaginary.

There was a lot to see: first the pounding waterfall, white with pounding roaring water.

We stopped at the weir for a drink (for the dogs, not me) and I took a series of strangely beautiful photos of Seamus. The sun was shining through the trees and catching his coat, confusing the camera. He lay in front of the magnificent Ilex Mitus, the Cape Holly with its gleaming silvery green trunk.

Seamus in the eerie evening light enjoying a drink while resting in the stream under the Ilex Mitis

Higher up the mountain we ran into fynbos as the light became ever more golden. The pink Protea burchellii and the first Protea nitida of the year. We had to bash through some bush to get to Protea nitida. This colony scatters an area of the mountain on top of the farm and they tend to flower quite late. This is the first of these graceful silver trees to flower.

Protea Burchellii

Protea Nitida

We took a little detour to the stream that leads off our land to the forest and came across some Microloma tenufolia. Never easy to capture, it somehow works well against the lime green leaves of the Lucadendron salignum and you can see the tenuous climber’s twisted stem quite clearly. The colour is amazing, always pinker in a photo than its more coral reality.

Miroloma tenufolia

Microloma tenufolia stands out against the brilliant colour of the female Lucadendron salignum

The Buchu that we grow commercially on the farm is in full flower and on the way down the mountain we stopped and in the perfect light just after sunset caught this flower-spangled shrub by the road.

Agthomsa crenulata

We had wonderful weather before the rains this week and there is a backlog of blog photos to post, along with splendid tales of the morning light as it hits the Simonsberg, the Paarderberg and Paarl Mountain and of the evening sun as it catches the water in the dams below us and they gleam golden, pink or red and orange. But those are tales for another day.

The Polecat and the Porcupine

Posted on July 5, 2014 by fynbosblog 4 comments

We were having dinner with my stepdaughter Robyn in Johannesburg earlier this week and she said “we can always tell when you are busy, Sarah, because you don’t write your blog.” She’s right, it’s been a busy few weeks. The runs continue but the blog has been neglected as I’ve travelled all over the place, and now a ton of reports need writing and people, horses and dogs have taken priority over the calm pursuit of blog writing. So this blog is a bit of a mixed one, with several runs and bits of farm life all mixed up.

We share the mountain with many creatures that we never see, none more nocturnal and furtive than the African Striped Polecat. Sadly we met one the other day, sad because she was deceased, Peter found her on the road and brought him home for a respectable burial. I didn’t have the heart to take a photo of her, so I have taken this one from google images, with apologies to the photographer for the lack of a credit. Of interest is that of all mammals, this is the stinkiest, stinkier even than a skunk. Perhaps it’s a good thing that they are secretive and nocturnal.

African Striped Polecat

We saw evidence as we ran up the mountain a week or so ago of another, less rare, nocturnal resident: a porcupine quill on the road. We quite often see the quills, and very occassionally the porcupines themselves and we love to think of them, snuffling around in the dark, happily digging up fynbos bulbs, of which we have plenty on the mountain. Apparently this is the biggest porcupine in the world. The photo of the quill is mine, the one of the porcupine also downloaded from google images.

Cape Porcupine

Porcupine Quill found on our morning run

The weather has been all over the place in the last few weeks. We’ve had a wet but mild winter so far and now, suddenly, the temperature has dropped. The water has been magnificent – as you can see from this photo: the mountain in the background is the Paarderberg and the full dams and the Berg River gleam in the last light of the setting sun.

The sun sets behind the Paaderberg

On the same evening I went deeper into the thick fynbos above the house to see if there was anything new or exciting flowering There was but I need to do a bit of research before I post it. Meanwhile I took this charming evening view of the farm buildings.

Another evening found us higher up the moutain and Jemima Chew is clearly enjoying being out on the mountain.

Runs have also been early in the day when the light is poor, or at sunset. I love how the Leucodendrum salignum glows in the gloom, a yellow-lime green colour, they shine on the mountain when nothing else stands out.

Leucadendron salignum Male

Leucadendron salignum Female, shining in the gloomy morning

And the magnificant King Protea, Protea cynaroides, is in flower at the moment. This is the South African national flower.

Protea cynaroides, The King Protea

At the top of the farm, close to where we found the Gladiolus watsonius, is a flowering white shrub. It looks like a Selago, but not any of the ones I find in my book, so identification is uncertain.

Selago

Finally a morning shot – with the Leucodendron salignum luminescent in the foreground, Paarl Mountain with the morning sun on it in the mid-distance and the Paaderberg in the background, covered in cloud. This is a magical time of year in this part of the world, the soaking rain promises a great spring flowering season and good crops for us on the farm. The light is magnificant, the days are getting longer and spring is getting closer.

Running in between the flying

Posted on June 17, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

When I got home from Nairobi last week little Jemima Chew was not looking her usual self. She’s what the South African’s call a ‘pavement special’, an SPCA rescue dog who arrived in our lives shortly after Seamus. Although quieter than the attention seeking wolfhounds, she’s a lovely dog and often ends up a favourite with guests. She also gets bullied by Maebh as a result of which she now sleeps on our bed at night while the hounds sleep in the kitchen. A perfect outcome from her point of view.

Jemima Chew (named for the Jimmy Choo boots she very nearly destroyed as a puppy) is always alert, always ready for action and always hungry. So when she was down in the dumps, refusing food and clearly off colour we were quite worried. Especially when Peter told me she’d been that way for a couple of days. She didn’t have a temperature, but in our part of the world you worry about biliary and I found a couple of ticks on her. We rushed her to the vet and although she didn’t have biliary she did end up on a drip for 24 hours. Poor girl, she’s so tough that in six years its’s the first time she’s ever had to go to the vet. By Sunday she was home, feeling much better, wagging her tail and demanding dinner.

Here she is in the misty afternoon light a week later. It poured with rain all last weekend but stopped early enough on Sunday afternoon for us to go for a quick run before I had to leave for the airport. This blog is being written on a plane between London and Frankfurt.

Jemima Chew, fully recovered

The light was fantastic and made the grove of Ilex Mitis by the weir look like a scene from The Hobbit. Seamus and Maebh put on their best performances for this photo.

Scene from The Hobbit, starring Seamus and Maebh

The waterfall, which I posted only a few days ago, is now white with pounding water – we must have had 30mm of rain at least and the farm is soaking wet.

Water!

One lovely result of a few days of rain is all the bird activity when it stops, especially as this is the mating season for most of our birds. We took a different route through the fynbos today and saw lots of Cape Sugarbirds having battles over the girls. The iphone which I used for all my flower photos is much less good at caputuring fauna but I did manage to get one image of the sugarbird inspecting his territory from the top of a Protea repens.

If you look closely you can see the Cape Sugarbird with his long tail

Not so many flowers on this run – the rain, followed by some sun, means there should be some new things to see next weekend when I get home. This is a new protea gleaming in the soft winter light. I have promised myself I will be stricter on identity this year, but I’m not sure what this subspecies is.

Unidentified pink Protea

No problem identifying Chasmanthe aethiopica which we have posted before. This group grows higher on the mountain on a different part of the farm – a damp shady area just below the weir. Such a lovely flowering bulb and reliably reminds me of the damp sweet smelling Irish spring where it grows wild on the verges and in the hedgerows.

Chasmathe aethiopica

Another shot of the graceful and beautifully coloured Chasmanthe aetheopica

Sunny Days

Posted on April 7, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

With Peter away Anna, a Swedish friend, came to stay the night and we started the evening with a sunset walk on the mountain. We finished the evening, needless to say, with far too much wine and lots of chat! Anna is a proper walker and I wanted to capture some flowers I’d seen out running so we set off in the gorgeous evening light with a specific aim in mind. As always the mountain was stunning in the evening the dogs were bounding with joy as we chatted and walked.

Metalasia densa is not particularly beautiful or charming but it is very common. The book says it is winter flowering, but here it seems to like the summer’s heat, or maybe it’s because we’ve had a wet year. In either case it is everywhere. Like so many flowers that are not necessarily beautiful at a distance, it is rather lovely in close up.

Metalasia densa, a rather scruffy shrub

Metalasia densa, the flower in close up

To my great joy this gorgeous Erica has burst into flower at the top of the mountai. This is Erica nudiflora, delighting us with a flash of pink as we crossed the road at the top of the farm. Anna is great company, very chatty and interested in everything and she finds my enthusiasm for these floral finds quite entertaining. She was very tolerant of having to interrupt both walk and chat while I try to photograph flowers in the fading light and the wind.

Erica nudiflora

The flowers of Erica nudiflora in close up

Of course proteas are the statement flowers on the mountain and the fabulous Protea nerifolia is coming into flower. I am sure we’ll have many photos of these over the coming months, the flowering season is long and they are particularly beautiful, with their pink petals and shaggy beard. This is the first of the year, taken at the lowest point of the farm.

Protea nerifolia

Leucadendron salignum?

This picture comes from an early morning run over the weekend; I couldn’t resist the morning light shining through the the new growth of this Leucadendron – most probably salignum.

And this last photo was taken yesterday evening, Sunday, as the sun set behind Paarl mountain and the valley was golden pink. We’ve been having amazing weather since it stopped raining.

Sunset over the valley

Wolfhounds slipstreaming in the wind and glorious early autumn sunsets

Posted on March 4, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Two lovely runs this week. One on a cool damp morning with the new growth of Leudadendron salignum glowing green in the grey light once again and bounding dogs enjoying the autumnal weather. The house is full of guests and it’s lovely to get up early, go for a run and enjoy my own company and that of the dogs, returning to a social breakfast full of chat and laughter before we get on with the day. Our guests are terrific, they know their way around the house and on Monday’s run I returned home to a delicious breakfast of poaches eggs with english muffins, avocado and olive oil, all prepared by Niall before he took himself off for a morning of work.

This morning was the perfect opposite in terms of weather, a typical hot dry windy morning with the heart monitor showing the heavy weather I was making of pushing up the mountain against the howling wind. The wolfhounds love the wind and stand face on, enjoying the feel of it slipping through their shaggy coats. As ever on a hot day, they enjoy a quick water break at Fox Pan as we run up the mountain and you can clearly see the wind ruffling their coats.

Seamus and Maebh enjoying water and wind

Although flowers are not prolific I can see the Cape cycle starting once again. Having grown up in the Irish climate where winter is winter and spring gets off to a slow start, this Cape climate is always a little strange to me. The slowest period is during the hot summer months of January and February. As the weather cools and the rains arrive, the whole mountain bursts into life, the flowering season starts again, lasts all winter and reaches it’s apotheosis in the spring months of September, October and November. Having been through the cycle once I am alert to the signs that the new flowering year is getting ready to launch. Murlatia hysteria is a real stalwart, along with the Salvia africana it really does flower all year long without a break, but now in anticipation of the rains it seems to be showing more blooms than ever. Here it is in the morning sunlight.

Muraltia heisteria

I cannot resist taking photos of the gorgeous Leucadendron salignum, particularly when it’s been raining which seems to set off the glowing green. There will be many more photos of this gorgeous plant during the course of the winter. It has begun its flowering season already.

Leucadendron salignum

One could do a whole blog just on grasses but as the are hard to photograph really well I tend to ignore most of them. It’s a technical subject and I have a couple of books, but not the time to identify this one which has just come into flower all over the mountain, especially in high, rather damp places.

Grasses with yellow flower

I’ve identified this as a member of the Helichrysum family. I’m still not sure that’s right but I can’t find anything else that it resembles. The flowers don’t seem very helichrysum-like to me, but I can’t find anything else that it resembles. As I was taking this photo just above Fox Pan, I realised that the dogs were very interested in the plant and really getting in to have a good sniff around. So I stopped and looked and you could clearly see that something had been lying up on top of it. Makes perfect sense, this plant is growing in front of a large protea, so it’s protected from the back, sheltered overhead and looks over Fox Pan and the whole mountain so whatever lay up there obviously felt completely safe and its lucky I didn’t run past at the wrong moment with the dogs. I presume it was a buck of some kind, we see lots of them and the dogs often put them up and give chase, but they are far far slower than any buck and don’t even try that hard. It’s lovely to see evidence of the animals who share this farm with us, whether it’s picking up a porcupine quill on a road that I’d only run the day before and imagine him shuffling up there in the dark, or seeing a plant flattened by a buck contented after her drink at Fox Pan and enjoying a rest on the mountain.

Is it Helichrysum?

We get the best sunsets at this time of year and I always try to capture and share the good ones. This was over the weekend as we sat on the balcony enjoying the house cocktail, gin and tonic with Campari.

Another perfect sunset

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

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.