3 October 2021 - Baby Bride Bioblitz - first small step towards a giant leap
...not quite sure today whether to quote Armstrong, Martin Luther King or Milan Kundera... be that as it may.. a beautiful baby step has been taken towards saving the brides..
The response to all my nudgings, iNaturalist stalkings (I'm sure I've been forgiven!), fb sharings and prophesies about the Bioblitz has been amazing.... By Monday 27 September already +20 people showed interest. I duly checked the weather, for rain would push the trip out to who knows when... as the days passed, the numbers kept on growing... as also the certainty of rain for the entire weekend... but I persisted, sent e-mails with participant forms and final arrangements (and please remember your raincoat!), checked a variety of weather reports, prayed!, .. shared my anxiety with Tony..
.. and wow, Sunday morning 3 October 2021 ALL 30 participants that signed up, arrived! fully kitted for rain and whatever else mother nature would throw at us
and did she shine.... the overcast weather rendered the valley dramatic as we entered.. stark krantzes and cliff faces lightly touched by the whisper of breakaway cloudlets .. the deep green of new life inamongst the blackened aftermath of the fire enhanced against the grey cloud backdrop, some faint waterfalls still visible in the deepest gorges surrounding..
The posse gradually, in spread-out fashion to be able to capture interesting observations wider than just the path, moved into the valley under Tony's experienced and knowledgeable lead. Fynbos occurs in two distinct forms, we were informed, the resprouters, less widely spread, and the re-seeders (about two thirds) more widely spread. And this was clearly visible in the after-math of the fire that raced through the valley in Feb '21. No, the fire was not devastating and disastrous. Not at all. It was regenerative in a way I could never have imagined. Bracken everywhere as we entered, large patches of bulb baroe, still flowering since a month ago, little patches of pterygodium catholicum here and there,at least three or four different moraea species and so much more! My absolute favourite on the way in was the hundreds, or was it thousands, I kid you not, of lachenalia all in full flower along the mountain slopes.. as per Tony the Afrikaans name 'viooltjie' refers to the sound it makes when the wind blows through large patches such as these... the sound like violins laughing together..
We took a well-deserved tea-break along the top old forestry jeep track overlooking a magnificent waterfall in the opposite krantzes. Along the way we came across wachendorfia thyrsiflora just about to open, the tiniest crassulas I have ever seen, pelargoniums in all shapes and sizes, cucculatum, myrrhleaf, fire, elongata.., signs of porcupine returning after the fire, baboon, fan aloes in full flower - they are so beautiful- albuca, bokkie baroe, the most beautiful lobelia coronopifolia with voluptuous large deep blue flowers... all the time I am aware of the sharing of this experience with 30 others, just as in love.. most of which it is their first time in this special valley.
we reached the little baby brides just after lunch. oh, the excitement!! there were lots and lots...there were also king proteas resprouting, mountain ceder, leucadendron spissifolium.. pinus canariensis right there in the back of the valley in amongst pristine fynbos!.. wind flowers (literally blows me away).. tiny little baby protea repens and protea laurifolium,. it melts your heart!!.. little baby agathosma ovata.. crassula capensis already flowering, masses of daisy plants resprouted, can't wait to see them a month from now when in flower! the lower foothills covered in deep purple flowering daisies of some sort!..
My dear friend Lizelle put it so clearly.. wow, I have seen the Blushing Brides in the only place they naturally occur, their natural home. If you have not seen them like that, you have not seen them.
If you joined us on the day, please don't delay in adding all your observations. And do join me in the pleasure of looking at them all, and trying to ID what everyone else have posted! This is the real beauty of it, our collective observations and experience.. I am already noticing so much which others have added which I myself have missed on the day, and learning their names as they are being ID'd..
a week ago, the valley was a closed secret on the brink of being lost... no more
