JANUARY 2022
The first month of 2022 was a beauty! Although there has not been very much rain, it has still been falling softly, leaving the rivers with a strong, crystal clear flow. The rainfall for the month varied between a low of 78mm for Gate 2, to a high of 191mm at Pebble Creek (unit 25). 132mm fell at the central area compared with an monthly average of 213mm since 2010. The season total for the office stands at 585mm, just over 300mm short of the average annual figure of around 900mm. Everything is so lush and green that the grass even looks tasty to a meat lover like me! The picture above illustrates this on the high altitude stream above Troutkloof waterfall on the Zebra trail. The banks are bursting with the huge leaves of River Pumpkin, the bright flash of Scarlet River Lilies and the pink shower of the pendulant flowers of Hairbells! I found a whole bunch of interesting wildlife this month and have highlighted some of them below:
While walking just below the cliffs of Goudkoppies I saw what looked like the fluffed panicle of a Natal Red Top grass plant, Melenis repens, but it appeared a bit too swollen so I approached for a closer look. It was not the panicle of Natal Red Top but a raceme of clusters of tiny, hairy Milkweed flowers that I had never seen before. I could not find anything like it in my books so I posted it on various social media sites and was finally contacted by a Dr. SP Bester, a milkweed specialist scientist (among other things) from SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute), who was rather excited about my find. He said it was possible that this could be a new species of Shield Tongue in the Aspidoglossum genus of the Milkweed family. He requested that I collect and press a specimen for him to study. I borrowed the relevant equipment from the local MTPA botanist, Tommy Steyn, and returned to the area, established a five thousand square meter quadrant around the individual that I had found, and began my search for more individuals. Fortunately, I managed to find a further five individuals in the quadrant so felt comfortable to dig up one of them to press and send to Pretoria. If ever one is to find a new species of plant, it will most likely be an insignificant plant like this one since all easily noticeable plants would have already been seen. But on closer inspection (inset), wow, what a beautiful little hairy flower! Now I wait...
This is another small, insignificant member of the Milkweed family: The Rosary Vine, Ceropegia linearis ssp. woodii, is not rare or endangered, it is just difficult to find because of its size and the fact that it grows in cracks in rock and cliff faces. In fact, globally, this species is the most cultivated of all the species of the genus and is known by a huge assortment of common names like Hanging Milkwort, String of Hearts and a few variations of that, Heart Vine, Jacob's Beard and many more! The trailing stems grow from a bulb between rock surfaces and at each node, a pair of leaves, flowers or even new bulbs can grow. The heart-shaped leaves are succulent and arranged neatly in pairs and if the plant resides in a spot that offers dappled shade, marbled or variegated (the leaves develop plain, dark green colouration in complete shade). The flowers (see inset) are extraordinary little traps and are similar throughout the genus. They have a swollen base and a long tube that has four lobes on top that join at the tip to form four windows (openings) that emit an odor that attracts its small fly pollinators. The fly enters the window to find maroon nectar guides that lead it down the tube into the swelling where the fused anthers and stigma reside with the nectar and pollinia (bags of pollen). The tube is lined with downward pointing hairs that allow the fly to enter the swollen base but not to exit it. This imprisons the fly for long enough to ensure that it snares the pollinia on one of its legs. There is sufficient nectar in the nectary to ensure the fly's comfortable survival until the downward pointing hairs wilt and allow the fly to exit its temporary prison and fly off to pollinate the next single use flower! Wow! What an elaborate design. After successful pollination, the ovary develops into a follicle. a double horn-shaped seed pod that splits horizontally and exposes many flat seeds with long hairs attached. The change in the moisture in the air around the seeds when the follicle splits, causes the hairs to begin to spread open to form a parachute for the seeds that are then dispersed by the wind. What a crazy little succulent! Ceropegia: keros = (greek) wax; pege = (greek) fountain, referring to the flower that resembles a wax fountain.
This incredible series of photographs were taken and sent to me, at my insistent request, by Dave De Vos from The Crofts (unit 19). They feature a pair of Malachite sunbirds, Nectarinia famosa, in and around their nest situated within the crown of a beautifully rounded Silver Sugarbush tree right beside the road between Tranquility (unit 15) and Jackpot cottage (unit 16). I remember him and Kenna Twiggs sitting in their Landrover for a few hours trying to get these shots. Well, it paid off! Here we see the male perched atop a Flame thorn tree, showing off his bright green breeding plumage and long streaming tail. During the non-breeding season he loses this plumage and resembles the more drab female, except he may still retain a few random metallic green feathers. We don't get to see him like that because they migrate locally to lower altitudes during the non-season.
This is the female perched atop a Silver Sugarbush, Protea roupelliae. This Protea obviously has superior quality, or much greater quantity nectar than the other Proteas of the area because both the Sunbird and the Guerney's Sugarbird greatly prefer this species and occur more frequently where this tree occurs. Interestingly, when they both find each other on the same tree, the Sugarbird dominates and chases the Sunbird away. Look carefully and you will see her long, almost transparent tongue protruding from the tip of her bill. This long, spaghetti tongue is what reaches the nectar. Malachite sunbirds are only seasonally monogamous, meaning a male and female hook up for a breeding season then part and perhaps hook up with another partner the following season. The pair then establish a territory spanning a hundred or so protea trees and, while the female constructs the nest, the male defends the this territory.
These are the two little chicks! They seem quite well advanced and fit quite snuggly in that soft domed-purse of a nest their mother built. If these chicks are successfully fledged their parents may use it again for a second generation of chicks. And even a third if it is a good season. And if the same male and female sunbird happen to hook up again next season, they may just use the same nest again, with the female strengthening the old nest with new material. She also, alone, incubated the eggs more than half of the time for two weeks before these two hatched and they remain in the nest for about three weeks before they are ready to learn to fly. This takes between one and two weeks and until then, they are herded back into the nest each night to sleep, like mom is tucking them in for the night.
Although less than ten percent of the adult sunbirds' diet consists of arthropods and other invertebrates, that is exclusively what the chicks are fed by the adults for rapid growth, here by the female. Perhaps a spider, taken from its web by the hovering sunbird, or an insect gleaned from its hiding place beneath a leaf. There are records of the adult sunbird regurgitating nectar for their chicks but this is disputed by some.
Here the male has fed the chick but the chick is plainly unimpressed by the quantity! At least he contributes a bit towards raising the chicks although its usually less than a third of the time. Again, he is showing us the sunbirds' long spaghetti tongue.
One last thing about sunbirds and their importance as pollinators: It is well known that tubular flowers in the red colour spectrum are attractive to sunbirds in general, making them the chosen pollinators for many plants. Plants on the estate like Aloes, Tree Fuschia, Red-hot Pokers, Wild Dagga and even the Clivias in our forests. These sunbirds, of all species, carry the pollen on their faces because it was deposited while they had their faces stuck into the flower opening so they could reach the nectar at the base of the long tube. Well, it was recently recognised that sunbirds, and particularly the Malachite sunbird, appears to be the preferred pollinator of the Torch orchid, Disa chrysostachysa. A tall (up to 1,2m) orchid with tiny golden orange flowers stacked tightly around a long spike inflorescense (chrysostachya = golden head of corn) that occurs west and south of us, as close as Dullstroom. Unlike the long tubular flowers usually preferred by sunbirds these orchids have tiny flowers with sweet nectar in swollen spurs with very narrow entrances that allow only the spaghetti tongue of the sunbird to access the nectar. The design of the orchid makes for a suitable perch for the bird and so it perches in one place while it probes each flower within its reach for the nectar. Paired pollinia (sacks of pollen common to all orchids) then adhere to the feet of the sunbird and get deposited on the following orchid flower without competition or pollen clogging (when other species' pollen is deposited on a different species of flower's female part and clog it up so it cannot accept any further pollen. A challenge for flowers that choose generalist pollinators) from other flower species.
This is a close-up of a female Wolf spider (Lycosidae family) as she squeezes herself into a gap between stones and rock to protect herself and her egg sack from my camera. I mention in a little feature in my blog of September 2019 that they are common night-time hunting spiders that are easy to find because their eyes reflect the light of a flashlight like an antelope's do. These well-developed eyes are similar to the eyes of a jumping spider, with a pair of larger ones on the front of its face, like a car's headlights. They do not spin a silken web and instead run freely at night in search of their prey which mostly consists of ground dwelling insects and other spiders. They also have three small recurved claws at the tips of their legs that they use for anchorage as they jump on the back of the prey animal who was either actively chased down and overcome or ambushed. Once anchored to the back of its prey, the spider rolls itself onto its back so that it is bear-hugging the unfortunate arthropod and then bites it and injects its powerful venom that quickly liquifies the insides of the prey. At first glance, the spider above may be mistaken for a Nursery-web spider from the Pisauridae family (blog of March 2020) because the spider is carrying her egg sack with her. There a a few important differences although they are closely related species' like the female Wolf spider carries her egg sack attached to her spinnerets by strong strands of silk while the Nursery web spider carries her egg sack with her mouth and chelicerae. Also although their eye patterns are similar, the Nursery web spider has similar sized eyes while the two "headlights" of the Wolf spider are clearly much larger than its other eyes (eight in all like almost all spiders). The female Wolf spider carries the egg sack with her, even defending it from predators like this one may have done because, if you look closely, you will see that she has lost two of her eight legs, both on the left side! Don't worry too much, they will grow back! Apparently, if the egg sack is detached from her, she will run around furiously searching for it until it is found. And when the spiderlings hatch, they will crowd up onto her abdomen and remain their, protected by her, until after their first moult when they will release a long strand of silk and balloon away, sometimes hundreds or even more kilometers away in the wind. If they fall off their mother's back before this, they will chase her until they can grab hold of her leg and scamper back up. If they don't succeed, they will be lost and die because, even though the mother shows great parental care for a spider, it only goes so far and she will not return to look for the lost spiderling.
I have mentioned before that I really like plants that associate with cliffs, or cremnophytes, usually because they are quite unique like the only fig tree that occurs here, the Red-leaved fig (see my ancient blog of 1 September 2013) and the Rosary vine at the beginning of this blog among very many. This dwarf shrub, a Narrow-leaved Bride's-bush, Pavetta gracilifolia, a member of the Coffee family, was photographed on the cliff beside the big concrete and rock bump at the crossing at K15. This cliff just keeps on giving! There is a big Red-leaved fig residing nearby, the stunted Cape Gardenia and a climbing Grape among others. In fact, I even mention this little bush my blog (of March 2020) featuring the Cape Gardenia but I did not, at that stage, know which species it was. The Bride's bushes have an interesting feature although not restricted to the genus, but found in three genera of the coffee family: If you look carefully at the leaves, you will notice that they seem to possess little bumps in their smooth skin, like pimples. These are nodules that house bacteria from the Burkholdaria genus, a group of bacteria that cause infectious diseases like Glanders in horses and others and Melioidosis which kills about half of the one-hundred-and-sixty-five thousand people it infects annually. These bacteria, when associated with the leaf nodules, are species specific which means that one particular species of bacteria associates exclusively with one particular species of plant. The origin of the relationship appears to have been a single infection event in the evolution of the plant where, either it shared a parasitic or commensal relationship with the plant and has, over time, evolved into a mutual relationship with the host. It was initially assumed that the bacteria fixed nitrogen like the bacteria that live in specially designed nodules on the roots of legumes but after experimentation it could not be proved. Since the bacteria is present in the seed of the plant, scientists then boiled the seeds to remove the bacteria and found that plants that germinated from these seeds all turned out grossly deformed, suggesting that the bacteria produces growth hormones for the Bride's bush. The bacteria ensure they stay with the correct species of plant by attaching to the seeds and then, when the seeds germinate, they move to the growth nodes of the new plant. The leaves develop stomata (small pores used in respiration and transpiration) when they are just buds (unlike other plants whose stomata develop later on) and the bacteria, residing in a jelly-like substance produced by the plant, enters the leaf through these and develop the nodes from there as the leaf grows. Plants, being life forms that cannot move, have evolved the most complex relationships with animals that can move in order to manipulate them to do things that would otherwise require independent movement. These strategies are infinitely complex and I think scientist are just beginning to scratch the surface of these complexities which prove to us how interconnected everything is.
This bracket fungus has got to be one of the easiest to identify when it is young and exudes this amber syrup. It is a Weeping Polypore, Pseudoinonotus dryadeus, and can be found growing in the darkest corners of our dense kloof forests. It usually occurs at the base of a broad-leaved tree trunk at a spot where the bark had been removed or damaged, maybe by a Porcupine or something similar. Once established, it causes white rot and it's mycelium (stringy tentacles) will penetrate the root crown of the tree, ultimately killing the tree. The root crown is the place where the vascular system of the roots, which is different from the vascular system of the rest of the tree, meet and connect. The Weeping Polypore, although appearing tasty, is not edible but also not poisonous.
Yummy yum! A most delicious looking and, might I add, tasty Raspberry from a White Bramble bush, Rubus rigidus, from the rose family that I found in rank bush near Rainbow Creek (unit 2). The raspberries we buy from the supermarket are mostly from cultivars of the species R. idaeus but many countries have their own species and cultivars. I have always thought that the fruit of the Asian Ceylon Rasberry, R. niveus, are the best tasting while our indigenous species had rather sour fruits. I was very pleasantly surprised when I tasted the fruit from this bush because it tasted as good as the Ceylon's but was even juicier! This made me happy because this is one of our indigenous species. I have so far identified seven species of bramble on the estate and, of those, four are indigenous and three are invasive aliens. After nine years of clearing alien invasive plants from Finsbury estate, we are finally at the stage of control where I could begin working on the brambles this month. This means I have had to teach my team to differentiate between the species so that they could remove the invasive ones and not harm our indigenous ones, something that is not commonly done when bramble are controlled and indigenous species are indiscriminately cleared together with the invasive species, denying many animals and birds (and humans) a nutritious indigenous fruit species. This is not so easy because, although two of the invasives are relatively easy to identify against our indigenous ones, one species. Rubus sp.X consists of many variations because it is a hybrid between the American Bramble and this one. My team is about halfway along the Kliprots river now and it seems that they are targeting the correct species.
Middle to late summer is the time for orchid hunting and this year has been no different. I have conducted a few hikes where we concentrated on finding orchids recently but the most successful this season, so far, must be the trip I took with the Harwoods and their orchid crazy guests from Bulldozer Creek in the middle of December. We drove all the way around on the Long Tom pass road, entered Emoyeni reserve through a gate opposite Hops Hollow Brewery and approached the summit of Mount Anderson as closely as we could and found only four species. But we did find the special one we were looking for, Disa staerkeriana, which only occurs on the summit of Mount Anderson and nowhere else on the planet (see blog of Sunday 19 February 2017). And another of the mere (I promised them eight species!) four species was a new one for my Finsbury orchid list. We then popped in to the Brewery for a huge burger and perhaps a beer or two and afterwards drove up to the aerials on top of the mountain beside the brewery, a fine orchid venue according to Duncan, the orchid crazy guest of the Harwoods. Was he right? Hell yes! We found a further eight species of orchid there including four (!) new species for me, one of which I found on a later hike up on Goudkoppies. Unfortunately, three of those cannot be added to my Finsbury list because they were not found here. We found twelve species of orchid that day! Anyway, the above orchid, a Lilac Split-lip orchid Schizochilus lilacinus, is one of the species I was hoping to find for the group but as I approached the spot where I had found them just a week prior, I saw they were no longer in bloom so not worth climbing the group up to. But these are special too because they, together with five species, so far that I know of, only occur in a very small range right here around Mount Anderson.
The beautiful, extremely showy flowers of the Wing-leafed Wooden Pear, Schrebera alata, blooming this month at the edges of our kloof forests and the thick riparian bush along some of our rivers. Not just showy but also pleasantly scented, especially in late afternoon and evening when it may attract moths as chosen pollinators in that segment of the day. They make great garden subjects because they are easy to grow and very fast growing too. They have these pretty flowers, attractive, glossy green leaves and the tree sports a nice shape. Plant a seed in spring-time and, voila!, in a month you will have a seedling, according to gardening literature. Protect the young trees from frost, though.
That's it for the month, and an exciting month it was since I also executed my first proper patch mosaic burns this last month. That is when I go out into the grasslands, with no staff, bend down with my lighter and put a flame to one point and then walk away and forget about it, simulating a lightning fire. Being so green at the moment, the fire will not burn unless the grasslands in question have enough moribund material, which is dry grass material from previous seasons that will ultimately smother the grass plant if not allowed to burn. The fire will inevitably burn out in the cool night or when it reaches areas with less moribund. A safe, easy burning policy that reduces fuel load and promotes biodiversity by simulating the natural fires that occurred in the grasslands before human intervention. There are a few patches now on the slopes from the valley bottom up to the Miner's cottage road and I have a few more planned for the month of February. Have a good one and, hopefully, see you soon.
