Visitors from the University of Transkei

Sizwe Cawe, Botany lecturer from the Mthatha campus of the Walter Sisulu University, visited with two honours students to give them some field exposure to plants of the Pondoland Centre. We initially met them at the restaurant at Clearwater which borders on the Umtamvuna Nature Reserve as we also had a need to investigate what was flowering along some of the potential routes for the Tony Abbott memorial walk scheduled for Sunday 4th October.

In cold, windy conditions with rain threatening, we elected to start by walking along part of the Fish Eagle trail down into the Umtamvuna gorge to see if the Clivia were still flowering. Fortunately, while no longer still at their best, there was quite a good show, good enough to justify the walk down to them. 

Also in the same rocky patch in the forest we found the rare Cyphostemma rubroglandulosum in flower as well as a small tree covered in lime-green flowers which we eventually concluded was Pachystigma macrocalyx . There was also a creeper - unfortunately not in flower yet - which looks like an Emplectanthus; we will need to visit here again in due course to try to catch it flowering. On the way out of the gorge we came across both sexes of flowers (on separate plants) of Garcinia gerrardii and a few flowers on Rawsonia lucida.
 

Pachystigma macrocalyx (a closeup of the flower is shown in "Flowering now (October 2015))

After enjoying lunch at Clearwater, we drove up to Beacon Hill to show the students a different spectrum of plant genera. Orchids are particularly well represented amongst the more obvious yellow, white and pink daisies.

UNITRA group with Pondoland CREW

Kate pointing out some features of Genlisea hispidula to Scott and April

Participants: Anne S, Dorothy M, Graham G, Kate G, Maggie A,Uschi T, April, Scott and Sizwe Cawe