Visit to Banner's Rest triangle and Rennie's Beach grasslands

Banners Rest triangle is a small portion of private property located just to the west of the R61 highway and just on the south side of the traffic light interesection at the entrance to Port Edward. We have found this unmanaged piece of grassland to have very diversie range of indigenous forb species. We were recently dismayed to learn that this piece may have been earmarked for a rerouting of the start of the road to Ezingolweni when the N2 is constructed on a more coastal route - this would probably destroy this small (and scarce) remnant of our coastal grasslands.

On this visit we recorded nearly 100 species in flower, amongst which was a very good display of Kniphofia coddiana, a species listed as Near Threatened in the SANBI Red List.

Fields of flowers

Kniphofia coddiana were flowering profusely - these should not be confused with the more common Kniphofia rooperii which flowers at the same time but grows in damp places.

After that we paid a short visit to the grassland at the Rennie's Beach section of the Red Desert Nature Reserve (a yet-to-be-proclaimed flora nature reserve) on the coast adjacent to the R61 and about 1 km before the border with the Eastern Cape. Here we found a carpet of pink Graderia scabra interspersed with mauve to purple Lotononis bachmanniana, the latter being a Near Threatened Pondoland endemic. (See the "Flowering now (August 2015)) post on this blog for photos of these and many other species.

Participants: Anne S, Dorothy M, Graham G, Kate G, Maggie A, Uschi T.