erica

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BONTEBOK NATIONAL PARK II

What a joy it is to see so many beautiful flowering plants this spring! The Bontebok National Park did not disappoint. There were many examples of the strangely shaped leaves of the Melianthus major (Cape honey flower). I will feature this plant and its flowers in a later post:

The Cape Sweetpeas (Podalyria calyptrata) nodded in the breeze all over the park:

One cannot help admiring the eye-catching Heliophila africana (Sunflax) growing close to the roads:

Then there are the beautiful purple patches of this Erics spp.:

There are swathes of the bright common sunshine conebush (Leucadendron salignum):

I will leave you with this carpet of attractive white African daisies:

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FIVE AUGUST ROADSIDE FLOWERS

Swathes of tiny white flowers wave from unexpected spots along the country roads.

A closer look reveals that they are one of the many varieties of fynbos plants known as Erica or heath flowers. The nearest ID I have come across for it so far is Erica scabriuscula.

There are numerous places where these, as yet unidentified, purple flowers show up through the grass.

These pretty yellow daisies are easy to spot along the edge of the road.

Less easy to spot are these tiny pink flowers.

The very beautiful September Bush (Polygala myrtifolia) flowers are beginning to bloom too.

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A PURPLE HAZE

This might have been a particularly good season for them, but during October I was struck by the purple haze that covered some of the hills near here.

These flowers were always too far away to be viewed properly, until the day I found these ones growing close to the road:

They reminded me of the bunches of white Ericas my father sometimes used to bring home for my mother when he had been out to the more mountainous areas of the gold mine, and so I looked at them more closely:

They are so very beautiful – and many of these blooms were still evident in the veld here and there until almost the end of November.

I think these might be Erica lateralis – even if they are not, I shall eagerly look out for their appearance again next year.