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South Africa - Western Cape (4)

AndrewR

By AndrewR

9 comments


As we were staying overnight on a small reserve with some animals, we had an hour’s tour before leaving. We were able to get close to white rhino

A cheetah

Cape buffalo

And a lion. He was in a cage as there was a newborn male cub which he might attack

Our lunch stop was at another wine estate. How many people can say they have a wild flower growing in their back yard that grows nowhere else in the world? Here, we saw babiana noctiflora

That afternoon we continued over Du Toitskloof Pass

Stopping to see plants near the top of the climb, which included babiana fragrans

Another day, another Botanic Garden. This was the Karoo National Botanical Gardens at Worcester, where a wide variety of desert and semi-desert plants are grown and displayed

This includes a large collection of succulents

Haworthia truncata

Monsonia herrei

Tylecodon singularis is extremely rare and had recently been confiscated from plant smugglers and given to the Botanical Garden. It has very exacting growing conditions and only started to grow this leaf two days before we arrived

Mesembryanthemums give tremendous colour

You can see how poor the soil is around this aloe

Even the parasitic plants are weird in South Africa. This is
hydnora africana

Back home we have slugs which eat our plants; in South Africa they have tortoises (which move a darn sight quicker!)

To be continued ….

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Comments

 

So hard to believe that tortoise are wandering free......great to see the white rhino out in the open, tremendously powerful animals!
We grew some Babiana in 2014, not very successfully I might add!
A tremendous amount to see, and such a diverse range of plants, and still more to come!!

1 Feb, 2017

 

another very interesting blog. I also grew Babiana with only one season of success. I suspect just too wet and cold.

so lucky to see such magnificent wild life.

1 Feb, 2017

 

very interesting. That must have been an exciting tour. Thanks for sharing

1 Feb, 2017

 

Fantastic....like a different world. The plants are spectacular.

1 Feb, 2017

 

Gosh how lucky you are Andrew.......what a fantastic trip.

1 Feb, 2017

 

Other worldly plants, thank you for sharing. The Mesembyanthemums are so colourful, like.

2 Feb, 2017

 

There are some amazing plants! That Hydnora and the Haworthia are incredible! Its easy to see why folk tried to grow the Babiana - it must have been worth the effort even if it did only last one season.

2 Feb, 2017

 

Thank you for the photography Andrew and for sharing.

2 Feb, 2017

 

Beautiful photos of the animals as well as the brightly coloured flowers.
What a journey you had!

5 Feb, 2017

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