06 May 2011

Walking Dooimanspad

Today we walked from the Wolfkop car park, up Maiden Peak and onto Klein Tuinkop. Alice came, as well as Sue and the English newly weds (not Kate and Wills but the equally beautiful Lucy and Richard) and Josie, and Thea came without Boris. This is the Alpha and me waiting for everyone to get going ...

The Food Lady was looking at this funny little sedge,

and this lone Aristea. She wonders if it is Aristea juncifolia which is fairly unusual and occurs on the Steenberg plateau - but usually flowers in November and December. Maybe the recent fire here confused it. Tea time on top of Klein Tuinkop. Paul, Pauline, the Alpha and me, Sue, Lucy, Richard, Josie, Thea and Alice. (Dougal off ratting somewhere I suppose.) Alice bought some Foxes fruity sweets to celebrate the recent weddings - they were not really to our taste - we prefer Melissa's walnut rusks.All amongst Paul's curly grass was this pink daisy whose name the Food Lady can never remember - Anaxeton laeve. Apparently anaxein means to polish in Greek and refers to the shiny leaves. Levigare also means smooth and polished, but in Latin this time, so whoever named this plant must have been hugely impressed with the clean and shiny leaves! Having a wonderful mouse hunt in the fynbos on Klein Tuinkop. Eventually we were dragged away, through the amphitheatre and out above our favourite forest of Spes Bona - Hangklip in the distance. We were a bit alarmed to see this sign as are we quite scared of Cave Peak (all those dogs that perish in these caves according to the Food Lady who needs no excuse to whip out the leads) but we also don't like the sound of a Dead man's road.

Treading warily in case we came across some dooimans.
Some prickly Asparagus rubicundis. Not very good bushes for mouse-hunting.

Not a dooiman in sight. The Silvermine Valley at our feet and Noordhoek Beach in the very far distance.

Alice pointed out these male Common Sunshine Bush (Leucadendron salignum) cones,

and the female ones with their little yellow flowers.

The Brandblom (Haplocarpha lanata) obligingly growing in a recently burnt patch. ('Brand' means fire in Afrikaans.)

A drink in the shady stream that leads to the waterfall, and home.

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