More thoughts on South Africa and the feel of the place

 

I'm taking a three hour immunoglobulin infusion as a chance to write another post about South Africa, which I visited for the first time in my life last month with Angie, who grew up here and spent most of her life here.

The place that you grow up in has a tendency to sink into your bones and your being at a very instinctual level. So for me, when I see a steep hill of sandstone houses with the soot of the 19th century on them, I am immediately back home in West Yorkshire. And when all the trees are sycamore and the hedgerows are full of gnarled elderberry bushes, I know where I am, and I know I am home. 

South Africa, and especially the Cape area where we were, is a completely different animal, but just as distinctive. It has its own look and smell and combination of sunshine, wind and blue skies above ranks of mountains most horizons. But most noticeably, it has the most distinctive set of plants and trees, as was made clear by a trip yesterday to the Cambridge Botanical Gardens. The world - to a botanist - is divided into 'Floral Kingdoms' where particular sets and taxonomies of plants tend to co-exist. The map below shows an approximate view of the six 'Kingdoms'.

You will see that in the US, Europe and a lot of Asia we are in one big kingdom called Holarktis. And then you will see a tiny kingdom called 'Capensis', which is almost completely within South Africa.

You will remember all the weird and varied plants that we saw on our walk around the Karoo succulent desert reserve;  well that is only half the story. Take heather for example. I believe there are 850 species of heather in the world, of which *600* are unique to South Africa! It is such a diversity hotspot that it is really interesting to see how this came about. It seems that part of the reason was long-term geological stability, so there was no ice-age or volcanic period to disrupt plant specialisation. The area is also prone to wildfires, so many plants, including the beautiful Proteas, have developed to repopulate effectively after fires have killed off other species.

And in the botanic gardens they had one entire greenhouse where most of the plants came from the Cape. They of course had several example of 'Lithops' (meaning 'stone face' which well-describes the camouflage that these plants use). The picture at the top of the page has a group of them. 

The other really distinctive feature of South African plants is the 'fynbos' (Afrikaans for 'fine bush') which is the distinctive low and varied but tree-free landscape of much of the Cape. It is often beautiful, always varied, and sometimes very fragrant. We passed a 'curry tree' once which is a very well-named shrub indeed. And the flavours and medical properties of fynbos are longstanding elements of the societies of Southern Africa. Here is typical 'fynbos'

So now I have the look and smell of the place in my own memory, and next time I go there I will know where I am as soon as I open my eyes.