Garden to Garden Visit

Harold Porter NBG to Karoo Desert NBG

Wet, cold Harold Porter 8.30am, Monday 3 August, seven intrepid members who realised that just round the mountains would be bright sunshine, and across the Breede Valley a Garden of many delights. The journey was a highlight on its own – Theewaterskloof Dam nearly brimming, a pair of fish eagles perched above a farm dam, snow on the mountains and flowers aplenty, especially on the way home.

Already at the garden were four more Kogelberg Branchers and our old friend, Werner, the Curator, to show us round for the next two hours and more. First stop had us all agog: not what we expected, evidence from a dastardly crime but there it was, an astonishing array of succulents filling a whole aridarum (greenhouse for arid area plants) stolen from our veld by Spanish plant thieves two years ago. (See Google www.capenature.co.za/illegal-plant/ for the whole story.) An astonishing 2248 plants were recovered, taken from areas in Southern Namibia then down SA to the Knersvlakte near Vanrhynsdorp where an alert Cape Nature official noticed a woman with a bag of succulents and called the police. Werner, the obvious person to look after the evidence, is now caretaker until decisions are made – they can’t be put back in the wild. Many of the plants are rare, on the Red List as endangered or vulnerable; one Tylocodon sp was known only from botanical illustrations, not even Ernst van Jaarsveld had been able to find it. Laptops taken in had GPS coordinates for the sought-after succulents – sophisticated, well-informed thieves they were.

Euphorbia ingens (naboom) 

The Haworthia and Gasteria collections – in an aridarum – are always fascinating. Outside were flowering bulbs from the area – a scented Babiana, Lachenalias, an unusual Watsonia. In the propagation nursery were seven improbable ex-residents of Betty’s Bay – seven Pachypodium namaquanum which Werner had grown from seed from the Richtersveld way back. They had to come with him when he was Curator at Harold Porter and now, after years in the nursery at Karoo Desert NBG, they are ready to be planted out in the garden.

It was then our turn to be out in the garden, brightly coloured with daisies (who needs the West Coast? was the cry), the mesems were mostly not yet in flower – you need to go at the end of September to see masses of colour. Adding to the scene were Klapperbos Nymania capensis with pinkish-red puffed up capsules and still some small red flowers; and the weird shapes of kokerboom or quiver trees or Aloidendron dichotomum which we used to know as Aloe dichotoma.

Nymania capensis (klapperbos, Chinese lantern tree)

Aloidendron dichotomum (kokerboom, quiver tree)

The end of our walk  was through the Richtersveld section but by then I was on the phone to Damas Restaurant to say our party would be late. Werner sadly had to stay behind but the rest of us had a good lunch with laughter and chat before heading for home – Elaine and Sue to Somerset West, Ohna and Abri to Stellenbosch and the rest to Betty’s Bay – Petro, Gwen, Barbara J, Joy, John, Peter and me.

Merrilee Berrisford