One of the highlights of our tour, one that sets it apart from many other trips to sub-Saharan Africa, was a chance to visit the Garden Route. This is an area along the southern coast, from Storms River on the east to Moseel Bay on the west (see map).
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| Map of Garden Route Area |
It is one of the most ecologically diverse plant communities in the world — indeed some say the most diverse. It is an area with a mild climate (supposedly second only to Hawaii however they measure that) meaning the winter low is rarely below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees F) and the summer high rarely higher than 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees F). It can rain any day and did so on a couple of the days we were there. The northern border of the Garden Route is formed by the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma Mountains and the southern border is the Indian Ocean. On the above map it is just a narrow strip along the water.
Our introduction was at the Tsitsikamma Section of the Garden Route National Park (shown on the map by its former name of Tsitsikamma Forest National Park. This section is right along the coast, as we’ll see in one of the upcoming posts. First let’s just look at the variety of flowering plants seen in just this little area. I’m going to diverge from my usual practice of commentary for each photo and just post a variety of plants. No names will be given because I don’t know them. I find them beautiful as nameless splashes of color. And I don’t find them particularly evocative of Africa but plants that could be (but aren’t) found in the U.S. First are several bushes with big bursts of small flowers in either white, purple-pink, or yellow.
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Small White Bush Flowers
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| Small Purple-Pink Bush Flowers |
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| Small Yellow Bush Flowers |
And then there are the bigger blossoms in yellow, white, purple, and pink.
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| Bigger Yellow Bush Flowers |
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| Bigger White Bush Flowers #1 |
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| Bigger White Bush Flowers #2 |
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| Bigger Purple Bush Flowers #1 |
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| Bigger Purple Bush Flowers #2 |
In addition to the flowering plants and bushes, there were also many trees here. Again, no names — I’m not very good on those even though many of these trees had name tags on them. My enjoyment of a tree is not based on its name and I hope you share this. (You’ll find the same is true is many of the animals we’ll see, although there is the occasional one I do know. Do not expect that, though, with the birds in particular.)
The one exception, at least for today, is the tree that follows. The multiple trunk system displayed by this tree is common to the Ironwood tree. There are apparently many types of Ironwood trees and I won’t try to get into which type this is. As you can imagine from its name, it is a very hard wood and thus can be difficult to work with.
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| Ironwood Tree |
And, in keeping with my policy of fewer names, here are another two trees in the same area.
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| Tree #2 |
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| Tree #3 |
Next time we’ll look closer at the Indian Ocean coast where these trees are found.
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