114 In the Heart of Africa 



vegetation consists of senecio and conyza species, with grey- 

 green foliage. The bushy helichrysiim, with yellow-white and 

 silvery pink immortelle blossoms, adorned the entire formation 

 in profusion. In places where the bush grows less densely a 

 lot of low shrubs have sprung up, which belong in part to 

 species often met with at home : small blackberry bushes, clover, 

 violets, and the umbella, Sanictda etiropcea. Then there are 

 several genuses of common orchids reminiscent of species found 

 in our meadows. 



Above the brushwood, which is representative of the sub- 

 alpine region, come the "alpine" growths, with the most noted 

 and characteristic plant of the East African Alps, the arborescent 

 Senecio J ohnstonii. Yet the specimens on the Ninagongo cone do 

 not attain large dimensions, the better trees being found singly 

 only lower down. They are strange growths. Imagine a stem 

 about twenty centimetres in diameter, repeatedly bisected and 

 trisected so as to form a crown built up candelabra fashion, 

 and place at the ends of the heavy branches bunches of luxuriant, 

 fresh-green, shaggy -haired tobacco-like leaves, the older of which 

 hang down brown and withered. Then picture to yourself great 

 pyramid-shaped panicles of yellow blossom-heads about a metre 

 in height, and resembling somewhat the Senecio -paluster, grow- 

 ing out of the clusters of leaves, and you may, perhaps, gain 

 some idea of these senecio trees, which attain a height of six 

 metres. On the Ninagongo cone these trees are only some two 

 metres high, and decrease in stature as the summit is approached. 

 A small kind of everlasting Helichrysiim Newii and a beautiful 

 ground-orchid, with dark rose-red blossoms, grow fairly high 

 up. The lava in the upper part of the crater cone is as hard 

 as iron, and has nothing but mosses, liver-wort and lichens 

 to offer amongst its rifts and fissures. 



The most characteristic point, according to Mildbraed, about 

 the Ninagongo vegetation lies in the fact that all the formations 

 are still in a state of development. The virgin underwood is 

 still young, and will, some time or other, doubtless be sup- 

 planted by bambubaceous and other foliaged trees. The ericacecs 



