Today is the 1st of September which means it SPRING DAY. YAY! Winter is over (even if its only on paper) and everybody is looking forward to summer. To celebrate the coming of spring I am posting a pic of the King Protea which is South Africa's national flower. And to make it relevant to Port Elizabeth, the picture was taken in the Van Staadens Wildflower Reserve. The reserve is about 25 minutes from town and a excellent spot to…
Although my post yesterday was for Spring Day which is actually only today, I decided to stick with the spring theme and post a couple more flowers. These are Bokbaai Fygies growing in pots around our swimming pool.
Tomorrow (or today, depending when you read this) is Spring day. So it means bye-bye to the winter (even if its just on the calender), flowers blooming, bees buzzing, butterflies hovering, birds chirping and longer days. Oh yes, and don't forget people in bright clothes welcoming the arrival of spring. So in celebration of the coming spring, here is some... yes, you guessed it, flowers.
The Yesterday-today-and-tomorrow (Brunfelsia pauciflora) is a fascinating flowering bush which originally came from Brazil. It is very unique as the flowers open purple before turning light lavender and finally white before wilting. This means that you get all three colours on the plant all the time. A word of warning though. The plant is known to contain poisonous alkaloids. The berries are especially toxic.
The Natal Creeping Fig (Carpobrotus dimidiatus) are found in coastal areas from the South East of South Africa and all the way up to Mozambique. Its a succulent which grows very easily and is often very popular as a ground cover in landscaping. The flowers are magenta and its close relative is the Sour Fig (Carpobrotus edulis) which looks very similar but has yellow flowers.
The Candelabra Flower is found in grasslands and is quite wide spread in summer rainfall areas. Unfortunately people pick them in the wild as the flower is quite striking and it never gets a chance to sow its seeds. The flower grows up to 70 centimeters high from a bulb. It normally flowers in the summer months where after fruit develops on the tips of the flower stalks. When they dry out they form a tumbleweed and spreads its seeds.
Although I have drove past the St Mary's Cemetery all my life, I have never taken the time to go into it for a look. Last week I grabbed my camera during one lunchtime and headed off to the oldest cemetery in Port Elizabeth. I'll do a post on the actual cemetery later in the week, but for today I want to show some of the little flowers I found growing between the grave stones.
I saw these little pink flowers growing on the grass on the sea side of Marine Drive across the road from the Marine Hotel the other morning. They were only on this one patch bordered by the little palm trees and it kind of looked like Spring got stuck in between the trees and never left.
In September I did a post featuring the Seal Point Lighthouse with a Candelabra flower in the foreground which I took some time ago. On our recent visit the Candelabra flowers were in bloom again and I decided to see if I can get some slight variations on the original photo. So here is one of the pic I came up with.