Outing to Beacon Hill

A rather depleted group made the trip up to Beacon Hill to walk up from the Offices to the outcrop with the commemorative plaque. With a cold front bearing down on us the wind was brisk, sometimes almost too strong to allow us to take photos. Nevertheless, the flowers were out in strength, particularly those having the advantage of being in the areas which were burned first in the program of management burns, i.e. the firebreaks.

The depleted team with a host of golden Berkheya setifera

 It was not long before we started finding some interesting flowers. There were many new shoots on the endemic Brachystelma australe, although these have yet to produce any buds. Not far away nestled in horizontal cracks in the sandstone rocks were young plants of what some insist is Stenoglottis macloughlinii although it seems the jury is still out so we will leave this to the taxonomists to fight out: these plants have buds and so should produce flowers within a fortnight or so.

Another plant we encountered with question marks against it is what we continue to call Scilla kraussii despite this species having been sunk into Merwilla plumbea; this "form" is, to our view, too different from the common Scilla natalensis (now also Merwilla plumbea), grows in a different habitat, and retains these characteristics even when in cultivation.

Scilla kraussii

We then found a real special; the endangered endemic Eugenia umtamvunensis with clusters of typical Eugenia flowers along the stalks. One of the two shrubs was flowering well as can be seen below.

Eugenia umtamvunensis

Eugenia umtamvunensis flowers

After sheltering in the lee of some rocks to have our lunch, we headed back to the office, coming across the purple Senecio speciosa in a surprisingly dry area, and then, a little further on, several bushes of Lotononis bachmanniana, interspersed with some tall stalks of Triglochin milnei.

Back at the office we found several shrubs of the endangered endemic Eriosema umtamvunense in flower - a good way to end the walk!

Eriosema umtamvunense

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