Saturday, 19 November 2011
Another very enjoyable and educational walk organized by Merike of the Botanical Society. Twelve of us met at the Springs nature reserve near Uitenhage in ideal conditions for walking.
We left the general picnic area with its rowdy crowd as soon as possible and headed for the trail through the Valley Bushveld.
First thing we saw were the dung beetles hard at work collecting making balls of dung to roll to their nests and lay their eggs.
Valley Bushveld look like this, lots of thorny bush intersperses with thornier still succulents and other plants. Not only plants but some wildlife as well:
We were there of course mainly for the Pelargoniums and we were rewarded by the P. odoratissumum putting on quite a show for us.
Also the ever present P.alchemeloides
Butterflies were abundant but not very willing to pose for us, I managed a few shots though:
The path went steadily uphill to where the vegetation became more sparse and grassland like, here we found P. reniforme
Finally we came across some Heaworthias and of course everyone had to gather around to see them: