In the Heart of Africa 
114 
vegetation consists of senecio and conyza species, with grey- 
green foliage. The bushy kelichrysum, 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, Sanicula eurof(Ea. 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 Johnstonii. 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 faluster^ 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 Helichrysum 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 ericacece 
