Nature's palette of joy
July 05, 2005
Winnie Graham
Nature's splendour can be discovered all over South and Southern Africa. But, writes Winnie Graham, many people still have to discover the wonders of the Drakensberg. It's all there: rock art, landscapes and biological diversity.
There was a time when lonely herdsmen watching their cattle among mist-shrouded peaks were the only ones to appreciate the
exquisite wild flowers of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg - one of South Africa's magnificent World Heritage sites.
All that has changed as more and more tourists, both domestic and international, head for the mountains.
The plants of South Africa's eastern seaboard are rapidly becoming as much a tourist attraction as those of another World Heritage site: those of the Western Cape, an area stretching from the southern tip of South Africa to Namaqualand. This has been described as "one of the world's most precious natural assets" and has been identified as one of the top 20 key eco-regions of the world crucial to conservation.
The wild flowers of uKhahlamba Drakensberg were for long overlooked, but that is now changing and much of the credit must go to an author/artist.
Elsa Pooley, the woman who has produced a number of books on the flora of South Africa, including Wild Flowers KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Region, has such a passion for the flowers of the region that she initiated flower tours some time ago. When her field guide was first published in 1998 it caused a major stir in botanical circles.
Pooley has found that international tourists are as excited by the wild flowers of South Africa as they are of the Big Five.
"I have had visitors who have gone down on their knees to reverently examine a plant even when it is not in flower - that is how excited they get when they see a plant in its own environment," she says.
Her flower tours are now giving way to an even more interesting development: botanical art workshops in the mountains.
When visitors learnt she painted flowers, they asked for lessons. So Pooley and a friend, Gillian Condy, a trained scientific illustrator who has won gold awards for her art work, decided to run courses in botanical art. These are held at the Cavern in the Berg twice a year - in October, when the mountain flowers emerge after the first rains, and usually in April, before the onset of the cold weather.
The lessons are relaxed affairs, with time taken to collect specimens in the hotel gardens and opportunities to hike or ride in the mountains and see the wild flowers in their natural environment.
It's a labour of love for the two artists, both of whom feel strongly about conservation.
"The Berg is popular with everyone," Pooley says. "President Mbeki spent Christmas at Giant's Castle a few years ago, and former tourism minister Valli Moosa made no secret of the fact that he was mad about the uKhahlamba Drakensberg."
The art lessons add an extra dimension to a holiday in the mountains. Not only do the visitors acquire new skills but they get to enjoy the spectacular scenery, the mountain birds, the antelope, including eland and mountain rhebok, and, of course, the wild flowers. Add the San rock art and you have one of the few world heritage sites which qualify for cultural reasons, spectacular natural landscapes and rich biological diversity.
Pooley's enthusiasm for the mountain flora has contributed to its recognition as one of the world's "hot spots" and a centre of plant diversity of global historical significance. She follows in the footsteps of botanists and and plant explorers such as scientists Olive Hilliard and Bill Burtt, formerly of the University of KwaZulu Natal. It was Pooley, however, who set out to list South Africa's "alpine" flowers so that all who walk (or ride) in the mountains would come to know and appreciate their rarity and beauty.
Pooley says the plants differ with every fold in the mountains, with every change in altitude, from one valley to another. Some cling to cracks in rock faces, surviving in basalt gravels, others float in shallow rock pools on the summit.
"Despite harsh climatic conditions, the highlands of Lesotho account for a remarkably diverse plant life," she says. "There are about 2 200 species, and almost 400 endemics - that is plants found only in this area and nowhere else in the world - flourish there. The area may be bleak and windswept, but flowers grow in marshes, mires and inaccessible cracks."
Flowers such as the colourful Disa porrecta, the beautiful Begonia sutherlandii, the fragile Gladiolus microcarpus and Galtonias and the spectacular Haemanthus humilis flourished unseen - until intrepid explorers and mountaineers started bringing home specimens from the mountain tops to show the less adventurous. That was in the 1800s. Today conservation laws protect flowers that are seldom seen in suburban gardens.
"Some were introduced to gardeners in Britain, Europe, the United States and Japan and today horticultural hybrids abound," Pooley says.
She says new plant species continue to be discovered.
"Plant enthusiasts are sometimes frustrated by name changes, but that is the penalty we have to pay in a region where there is still-to-be-discovered flora," she says. "Southern Africa has more than 23 000 plant species - the richest temperate flora of an area of comparable size in the world."
"There has been an explosion of interest and academic research into the chemical properties of these plants and much of this information is being used in mainstream Western medicine."
Pooley has initiated several wild flower nurseries and established five public indigenous gardens. In addition to writing the three field guides published by the Flora Publications Trust, she has written and illustrated four other popular books on indigenous flora and published a number of scientific papers.
She is excited about imparting her knowledge to South Africans.
"Forget Namaqualand," she jokes. "The show there is over in two months in early spring. Discover the Drakensberg flowers - a longer season in high summer."
tFor more information call the Cavern at 036-438-6270,
e-mail cavern@iafrica.com or visit www.cavernberg.co.za
