South Africa - Western Cape (4)

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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 ….

• 1 Feb, 2017
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