Fosters Folly
It was that favourite time of the week for us, Thursday. We met up at Beacon Hill where the diligent Tracey presented us with a home-made surprise - face masks, professionally sewn from beautiful fabrics. Maggie joined us for tea, with freshly baked muffins, and was so agile after her hip replacement that I'm sure that in no time at all she will be joining us on our botanizing filed days. We decided to explore Foster's Folly on the Western Heights to look for Disa baurii and Euphorbia bupleurifolia.
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Disa baurii
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We set out and meandered down a hill, welcomed by glowing coral splashes of
Erica cerinthoides.
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| Erica cerinthoides |
There had been just a few millimetres of rain the day before but we were surprised by the amount of water we found bubbling over the rocks in the stream.
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| A clear stream running down to Cascades |
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| Tracy, the day before her birthday. |
Along the edges of the bank, flowering Disa tripetaloides stood out against the dark soil. Gazing intently at them and taking in all their delicateness, you could be forgiven for thinking they had come right out of a fairytale. They too looked as if Tracy had fitted them with little face masks.
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| Disa tripetaloides |
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| Disa tripetaloides |
Our expectations of seeing Disa bauri were exceeded - first a solitary one, which we all rushed up to photograph, and them clump after clump, their delicate blue heads and frilly anthers sticking out in the grass.
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| Disa baurii |
At the top of the hill, we searched in the long grass for
Euphorbia bupleurifolia, criss-crossing the area and trying to pin down where they had been spotted last year, but with no luck.
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| At the top of the grassland in Western Heights. |
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Dorothy and Tracy
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Tracy
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Dorothy and Alf
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| Eulophia parviflora |
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| Eulophia parviflora |
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| Aspalathus chortophila - Tea bush |
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Aspalathus gerrardii - Natal Prickly Pea
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| Psoralea arborea |
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| Psammatropha mucronata |
We meandered to the forest at the edge of the gorge, where Buyi went off with Anne and Dorothy. She was working on a project to research and identify trees with differing leaf arrangements and shapes. The rest of us wandered off and found
Alberta magna in flower and seeds on
Indigofera natalensis.
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| Studying trees |
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| Indigofera natalensis in seed |
We gathered for lunch on a ledge with a spectacular view over the Cascades, an area of rocks and pools, steeply flanked on one side by grassland and dense forest on the other. With the warm sun overhead, we quietly absorbed the spectacle. The fragrance of Tricalysia capensis filled the air, reminding us that the seasons were changing and spring was coming. Far-off cries drew our voyeuristic attention to the courtship of the amorous Forest Buzzard.
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| Tricalysia capensis |
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| Leonotis intermedia seed head. |
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| Dorothy and Buyi |
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| Lasiosyphon anthylloides |
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| Athrixia phylicoides in seed. |
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| Lunch on the rocks at the end of the earth. |
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| Fosters Folly |
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| Strelitzia nicolai |
We began meandering back through the grass, down the hill and over the stream and gently we climbed up again. One didn't know which was more beautiful, the orchids or the Ctenium concinnum that curled and waved in the gentle breeze.
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| Helichrysum auriceps |
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| Ctenium concinnum |
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Ctenium concinnum
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| Tracy and Buyi heading home. |
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Front: Gail Bowers-Winters, Tracy Taylor and Buyi Zakuza
Back: Mark Gettliffe, Alf Hayter, Dorothy Mcintyre, Anne Skelton and Debbie King.
Special thanks to all have made this blog possible in their knowledge of plant identification namely (Kate and Graham Grieve, Dorothy Mcintyre, Anne Skelton), in getting us to the destinations of our excursions, and for their spirit and presence and to Alf Hayter in co-editing the blog with me. Thank you.
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“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
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