A floral feast at Cubica Heights

Anne reported having been inspecting parts of the Umtamvuna Nature Reserve using Google Earth and had seen that the grassland at Cubica Heights appeared to have just been burned in a management burn on 12 August 2016. After a period of more than 6 weeks and having had some reasonable rain showers in the interim, we thought it might be worth visiting the area to see what was flowering.

It was a good decision as the grassland presented a very colourful display in shades of pink, purple, white and yellow. While we have been seeing most of the more obvious species in previous months, the accumulated vigour was inspiring. This flush of flowers has undoubtedly been brought about by the relatively late burn and the subsequent rain. Unfortunately it is very difficult to capture this sort of chaotic floral abundance in a photographic image so we will have to resort to closeup images of some of the more unusual or eye-catching of these.

The first unusual species to catch our eyes was a leucistic form of Hilliardiella oligocephala - normally a deep magenta.

Leucistic form of Hilliardiella oligocephala

Normal form of Hilliardiella oligocephala

Close to the vehicles we found two herbaceous Euphorbias in flower; Euphorbia guenzii and Euphorbia striata. These forbs with their yellow-green flowers tend to be difficult to spot amongst the taller grasses.

Euphorbia guenzii

Euphorbia striata

Growing close to the ground we found striking Rotheca hirsuta, and nearby was a Thesium pallidum.

Rotheca hirsuta

Thesium pallidum

We walked down a short distance into the Outeniqua falls basin and saw several Cytorchis arcuata in flower along the cliff edges and several tiny Drimia uniflora, each with a single 4 mm long flower hanging at the end of a hair-like stem.

Cytorchis arcuata

Drimia unflora

Back up into the grassland, we found two other members of the Euphorbiaceae family, Clutia cordata and the similar-looking Clutia disceptata (smaller leaves and flowers have longer stalks).

Clutia cordata

Clutia discepta

On a south facing rock ledge we found a small group of Disa sagittalis.

 

Disa sagittalis

Along the cliff edges there were robust groups of Pelargonium catitatum as well as a bright magenta Dolichos climbing amongst other shrubs. Below in the gorge the new flush of pale whitish leaves were evident on the Combretum kraussii, and rather atypically, one at eye level on the cliff edge had green leaves and was in flower. Rhynchosia caribaea, another creeper, was seen showing off its yellow flowers high up in a tree.

Pelargonium capitatum 

Dolichos sericeus

Combretum kraussii

Rhynchosia caribaea

Heading back to the vehicle on this circular walk, we were lucky to encounter a few of the rare Cyphostemma rubroglandulosum at the edge of the forest, and in the open grassland were the first of many Sopubia simplex.

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Cyphostemma rubroglandulosum

Sopubia simplex

A good day and one that bodes well for the forthcoming Tony Abbott memorial walk starting at Clearwater on Sunday.

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