South Africa

Mike S.

A plant which was only sort of on my bucket list for this trip to South Africa, but immediately became my favorite plant on this whole botanical expedition is called “Elephant’s trunk” in English and “Halfmens” in Afrikaans and the scientific name is Pachypodium namaquensis. We saw on two different little hills or Kopjes in Afrikaans, one with white quartzite boulders and one with sun-darkened granite-gneiss rocks. I loved them in both places. I love this species and I have a small one growing in my collection as they are pretty easy to grow from seed which is available here in the USA. I didn’t even think of bringing seeds or plants back home with me. Poaching of succulent plants is a big, big problem in South Africa and I wouldn’t dream of adding to it. Besides most of these plants are available from nurseries or seed providers in this country especially in California, Arizona or New Mexico.

 

On The Road – Mike S. (now with a Democratic Congressperson!) – Namaqualand, South Africa Part 4. More weird plants and wild sceneryPost + Comments (10)

Mike S.

More scenery, succulents and birds from Namaqualand along the NW coast of South Africa in August of 2024.

 

On The Road – Mike S. (now with a Democratic Congressperson!) – Namaqualand, South Africa Part 3. – Succulents and birds inPost + Comments (8)

Mike S.

Last episode we looked at vast fields of wildflowers in the area south and east Springbok, South Africa, this part and the next I’ll be sharing plants and birds we saw north and west through the Richtersveld to the Namibian border at the Orange river.

It was dry, but desert and drought-loving plants are one of the main reasons I took this trip and they can look beautiful and interesting even when they aren’t in bloom. It was still late winter, so it wasn’t hot yet.

As a side note, one feature of this trip which sort of surprised me was the prevalence of people speaking Afrikaans more than English in the western part of South Africa. It is apparently the first language for people of all races in the area we visited. I didn’t get to meet, or at least I didn’t hear any one speaking Khoikhoi, one of the Khoisan language group that uses different tongue clicks as consonants.

On The Road – Mike S. (now with a Democratic Congressperson!) – Namaqualand, South Africa Part 2. Succulents big and smallPost + Comments (12)

Mike S.

Last August I made a bucket list trip to South Africa to see wildflowers, including succulents plus birds too. I’ll share a small sample of the thousands of pictures I took in 3 or 4 installments.

I flew to Capetown (a 15 hour direct flight on Delta from Atlanta to Capetown. We travelled up the west (Atlantic) coast and a little bit inland all the way to the Namibian border at the Orange River. This is mostly a winter-rainfall area, although the rains can be spotty or almost nonexistant as you get further north.

The goals for this 20 day-long trip were :

1) To see and photograph the  late winter “superbloom” of wildflowers

2: To see and photograph as many different succulent plants as possible in the drier parts of Namaqualand and the Richtersveld. My special interests include growing “living stones”, e.g. Lithops and Conophytum species and relatives in my greenhouse, so seeing these wild was a major goal!

3: To see and photograph all the birds!

4: To see and photograph all the amazing scenery on this first trip of mine to Africa!

Our small group of three travellers we lucky to have a local guide from (and owner of ) Pillansii Tours which specializes in botanical tours in South Africa. I also did birding (as I always do!) and mostly did the identifying on my own. Although our guide was very good at spotting larger birds.

This first installment is a selection from the “Superbloom” areas . Places that had received rainfall this winter (June and July there in the Southern Hemishpere). These areas were scattered, but our guide had gotten reports and scouted so knew where to take us,

On The Road – Mike S. (now with a Democratic Congressperson!) – A Superbloom of flowers in Namaqualand, South Africa, August 2024Post + Comments (25)