Other plans meant a short walk on Saturday afternoon in a brisk North-wester, so we took in an area we hadn't visited for several months.
But first, an explanation of something that's been worrying us for several weeks, what was happening to the seed pods on the Agapanthus walshii? Last year they dried up on the stalk and we were able to come away with about a dozen tiny seeds, leaving the rest to scatter. This year, the whole pods were missing. We took just two whole pods, before they were fully dry and brought them home in a tissue and opened it a couple of days later:
We had seen a hole in one of the seeds a couple of weeks ago, now we know!
Back to this week, the Lobelia tomentosa, which I see means 'hairy' or 'felt-like'. It really looks as though this flowers year-round, adding deep blue splashes to even the barest veld:
Here and there, examples of the Lobelia with the paler, smaller wider flower and the fine tangled stems can be found, sometimes entwined in another plant. We're still looking for a name!
This Restio shows how strongly the wind was blowing! Our farm is in the medium-green part on the extreme left, before the built-up area, which shows how close we are to this natural garden.
Stoebe spiralis are still making pale yellow dots here and there. The tips of some of the florets are just starting to turn brown:
The whole plant looks like this:
A darker green bush which looked 'out of place' caused us to walk a short way off the road:
The clue is in the middle at the top! Liparia splendens, or Mountain Dahlia! See how it's growing up between the stump and bark? However, the flowers were few, showing us how 'splendens' the other example is which we have seen!
There are still many pink and mauve Ericas; this looks like pulchella, with the dark red sepals:
And this looks like Erica multumbellifera or Many-umbrella Heath, we don't find many of them:
The whole plant:
A different one with pale sepals, yet not as pronounced as those on the coriifolia:
This one grows on taller stalks:
And another with longer, finer, denser flowers which we see lots of:
The Tritoniopsis lata aren't finished yet! In one place we found a shallow water-course which had spread the seeds effectively all down its length. The plants were well established:
Detail of a flower:
Here's a strong example of Psoralea pinnata, the flowers long spent. It has been hacked at, but it doesn't seem to have suffered much from it:
The spent flower which would have been blue, looks like this now. One can see where then name 'pinnata' comes from:
Last week, Alison suggested the plant with the red berries we saw might have been an Osyris speciosa or Colpoon speciosum. It didn't match the iSpot photo, but does this?
It doesn't look like it in this view above, but the spatula-shaped leaves are slightly red-rimmed, as can be seen below. The (few) berries can be seen at the bottom.
In the March issue of Veld & Flora, Heather D'Alton has written about the effects of over-harvesting of wild flowers; in her case, on the Agulhas Plain. I have seen bakkie-loads of Brunias being driven out of our valley recently. Here's an example of one which is thankfully re-growing:
In the middle it has been 100% harvested, which would have killed other Brunias, according to the article. http://www.flowervalley.org.za/
A few weeks ago we saw that this Leucadendron was showing signs of dying back. Now it's a goner :-( It has a very thick stem, so it's been there for many years.
We're still looking for a tortoise to photograph for the experts to identify, but we didn't even know which way this one was going!
This delicate creeper was growing amongst an Erica, any ideas?
That's it for the week.... unless something else crops up!
:-) A
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Saturday 22 March 2014
Long Week-end Saturday Flower Walk
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