Editorial
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| The type of shrub which was abundant in some parts of the Karoo veld that we had driven past |
In October 2023 Kate and I took a relatively leisurely trip to Cape Town stopping at Middleberg (EC), and Nieuwoudtville (NC) along the southward trip and getting exposure to awesome swathes of the Karoo's floral biodiversity. A notable feature of the veld on the trip between Middelberg and Nieuwoudtville was the countless purple-flowered shrubs - plants that time did not allow a stop to investigate en route. We had arranged to spend two nights at each of these locations to give ourselves the opportunity to explore the veld and we were richly rewarded in each case. At Mt. Melsetter near Middelberg (EC) we saw a portion of a skull of the early dinosaur Leptosaurus murrayi before exploring further and finding numbers of Rhigozum obovatum just coming into flower. Although the flower season was over at Nieuwoudtville, there was plenty to see and we had the place to ourselves.
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| A portion of the fossil skull of Leptosaurus murrayi on the farm Mt. Melsetter |
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| Rhigosum obovatum |
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| Euryops tenuissimus |
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| Euryops tenuissimus providing splashes of yellow on a rocky hillside near the Oorlogskloof River gorge on the farm Papkuilsfontein, near Nieuwoudtville |
On the return trip from Cape Town to our next overnight in George, we stopped just after passing through Barrydale, WC, to stretch our legs as the roadside flowers had caught our attention and we found a convenient place to pull off the road.
Here, for the next 20 minutes or so, we wandered amongst cushions of bright vygies - in some cases, so bright to make it almost painful to look at the flowers in the clear mid-day sunshine. In the area around our home on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, we have few species of vygies, so, to be exposed to so many obviously different species during this brief stop was a sensory overload. Most unexpectedly, we also found Dianthus caespitosus, the Karoo Pink, growing in this harsh, shaley soil. It was immediately recognisable as a Dianthus but required a dive into our reference books to identify to species level. Unfortunately, when it came to the vygies, the reference books were less helpful and I will have to rely on other iNaturalist enthusiasts who are more familiar with Karoo plants to help with IDs for the observations I posted for this spectacular spot.
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| Dianthus caespitosus, the Karoo Pink. |
For once, we had luckily managed to get our timing right and the flowers along the Karoo roadsides we travelled were very tempting. On a previous trip along this route we encountered masses of Portulacaria afra in flower in the Huis River pass, so it is clear that the area has much to offer. However, this time we had a fair distance to cover and this precluded further exploration, so we will have to plan a return visit at an appropriate time to dedicate more effort to exploring this interesting and very different habitat.
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| A selection of some of the vygies we saw along the roadside near Barrydale, WC. |
A little later that afternoon we managed to find a safe place to pull off to get some photos of the fruits on Nymannia capensis, the Karoo lanterns.
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| Nymannia capensis |
This edition has several articles about orchids: it includes an article covering a new orchid species, an article about a study of the Satyrium longicauda complex
and one about two books on the orchid species of the southern Drakensberg.
There is a paper on the reinstatement of an old name of a species of Craterostigma, and one about arboreta in South Africa. We have another on the flora of the Nkonka Trust grassland situated in the midst of a residential suburb and industrial area in Ethekweni. Finally we have an article giving a South African perspective on the popular garden genus Wisteria. I am grateful for the work by the contributors to this edition. I wish all PlantLife readers well and happy botanising during the new year of 2024.
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