Sunday, October 4

Spring Flowers Trip

On September 2nd we headed out on a trip to Kamieskroon and then Nieuwoudtville in the Namamqualand region, up the western coast of South Africa from Cape Town and then a bit inland. To get there one drives through beautiful country side.

Our first stop was to the floral display in Clan William, a town that marks the official beginning of an area known for its Spring flower display. In the main town we visited an old assembly hall which gets fitted out with the season's beauties - sort of like Burlington's spring flower show. From there we continued on to Kamieskroon a further north outreach with its own speciality of flowers. What was striking were the small regions in which only certain plants were found. We needed flower and plant books to identify many of the species.

I’ve shown here a smattering of what we saw and a few photos of the friends with whom we traveled - Jeni and Dudley for the first few days and then a larger group over the weekend. We traveled from Kamieskroon to a farm house at a place called Severfontein which means seven springs. It was a big old house with lots of rooms and we catered for ourselves having yummy meals and great company in addition to the excellent flower viewing.





One of the best people memories was when our friend Moriah showed us the male and female restio plants in the field and explain how one can identify them in the veldt. She has an amazing depth of knowledge about South african plants. Actually many in our group were very knowledgeable so it was wonderful to be touring the veldt with them.


We were also treated to the time and expertise of Tim and Judy's local artist friend Willem - he is a master of detail and showed us some rarely seen blooms- specifically a white sparaxis with purple center (in the middle of the photos.)