Blown away by a display of Cyrtanthus breviflorus (Saturday 2 September 2017)

Spurred on by a visit by a well known orchid photographer, I decided to see what was flowering at the Western Heights, despite its having been burned only recently. But a first stop was at the Terraces as this fire break had been burned much earlier.

Although the Terraces was disappointing because of a total absence of orchids there was quite a lot in flower, with much more to come soon. On the banks of a small stream we saw numbers of spikes of Disa tripetaloides. On the adjacent steep slope we found Hesperantha baurii and there were many Merwilla plumbea nearby, both in flower and in bud.

Disa tripetaloides

Hesperantha baurii

Merwilla plumbea

Probably the most conspicuous flower in these grasslands was Graderia scabra showing small pink patches everywhere. There was even a single white morph of this species. Another less obvious but still eye catching species was Lotononis bachmanniana. Sopubia simplex was yet to be flowering at its best but from the numbers of buds on flower stalks, there will be a good showing from these in the weeks to come.

Graderia scabra (white morph)

 

Lotononis bachmanniana

Sopubia simplex

Skirting the cliffs above the Umtamvuna we saw several Vernonia galpinii amongst the rocks.

Vernonia galpinii

Then on to the Western Heights where we parked just inside the reserve gate and walked westwards past the Swamp Forest. The "freshly" burned section is yet to show much sign of life although buds are just starting to emerge from the Merwilla plumbea bulbs. However the firebreak along the fence line, having been burned a few weeks earlier, was looking much better and it was not long before we started finding orchids. Although these were common species such as Eulophia parviflora and Eulophia hians they were there in good numbers. We also saw a few spikes of Satyrium longicauda but none with open flowers.

Also seen along this section were Eriospermum cooperi and several Senecio natalicola. Hugging the ground we found a Rotheca hirsuta.

Eriospermum cooperi m

Senecio natalicola

Rotheca hirsuta

We crossed the stream looking at more Disa tripetaloides and then noticed a few Cyrtanthus breviflorus flowering. Gazing around it soon became obvious that there was a mass of several thousand (perhaps tens of thousands) Cyrtanthus breviflorus popping up on the edges of this wetland area - a very impressive sight that is probably not adequately captured in the photo below. Suffice it to say that in the lower photo, all the yellow shades (and not only those in the foreground) are more of these flowers. This is a fire-stimulated species but I have never encountered a mass flowering of this species like this before - a great privilege!

Cyrtanthus breviflorus

Cyrtanthus breviflorus in mass

Participants: Graham G, Herbert S.