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May 1, 1903; 
SOUTH AFRICAN FLOWERS IN 
THE MONTH OF MAY. 
2O66O= 
‘By Caruerine C. Hoptey. 
Though April and May are in reality 
autumn months at the Cape, it is interest- 
jing to the English visitor to observe how 
yery closely they resemble the Northern 
spring, both in weather and in. vegetation. 
jhe caprices of April display themselves 
similarly in showers and sunshine alterna- 
tely, and the same kind of chilliness in the 
atmosphere is perceptible as here when Wwe 
say, “Rain is in the air.’ And, in addition 
to this, you see the fields and _ roadsides, 
which for months have been brown, barren, 
and unsightly, suddenly clothed with green, 
and within a week with flowers, brilliant 
and abundant, that you have never seen 
before, and you cannot divest your mind « f 
the impression that the season is actual 
spring, and not autumn. April is truly “the 
opening month” there, as at home, and 
May, as in England, sees the landscape at 
its freshest. The reason is evident. The 
summer heat and drought, which baked 
the earth deep down, and rendered it in 
many places actually hot to the touch, is 
now succeeded by rains, which turn it into 
a veritable hotbed, and act like magic in 
clothing the dried-up and barren places 
with verdure. This may not invariably be 
the case ; nor may the change be so sudden 
in all parts of the extensive area that we 
call South Africa, which embraces such 
yaried physical features; high mountains, 
rocky and rugged, deep and well-watered 
valleys, elevated table lands, and vast 
desert regions where during the dry season 
not a drop of water is seen for miles. Con- 
sequently the climate also varies consider- 
ably, and the seasons are less marked “han 
in Europe, those of agriculture and vegeta- 
tion being more dependent’ on the weather. 
Dependent also on another evil, locusts! 
Rains may be propitious, and vegetation 
correspondingly luxuriant, but the locusts 
on their part may defeat moisture, and 
every green thing may vanish in twenty- 
four hours. Drought and locusts are the 
two natural enemies of the colony. 
But there were no locusts in the. part 
where I was that year, the extreme South, 
where the natural condition seemed more 
of spring than of autumn. It was in Sep- 
tember, the actual spring, when I first saw 
the Cape, and then most of our common 
English garden flowers that had been accli-* 
matised were in bloom. Daisies, pansies,’ 
stocks, pinks, wallflowers, &c., besides the 
countless native plants known only in our 
greenhouses in England. But the acclima- 
tised plants looked as if they had never 
been out of bloom, and more as if they 
wero “going off,” as our perennials do to- 
wards the end of summer. It seemed as if 
the climate had turned the annuals into 
perennials. Remarking on this to the 
superintendent of the Botanical Gardens 
at Cape Town, hé said: “On the contrary, 
fis the colder climate that has turned 
some of our constant bloomers into an- 
nuals.;” that in the colder regions there 
7 
THE AUSTRALIAN GARDENER, 
was a much longer period of the year dur- 
ing which vegetation is checked, whea 
plants and trees hybernate in fact; where- 
as at the Cape the repose in vegetation is 
very short, acclimatised trees shedding 
their leaves for a period of six weeks only, 
or two months at most, and this often dur- 
ing the hottest season. Indeed, I do not 
remember seeing any tree ever quite baze 
of leaves xs in our English winters, as tho 
new growth begins before the old leaves 
havo all fallen. The true winter or period 
of rest is, therefore, estivation rather than 
hybernation. “Ours is a winter flora,” 
sild Professor MacOwan. 
And thus it was that in May, the first 
winter month of the almanac, the ground 
is covered with a new and brilliant carpet 
of blossoms; though they sometimes begin. 
to appear in March and April. At this 
season every bank and bit of roadside waste 
ig spangled with the lovely little oxalis, 
sometimes one color predominating, some- 
times several colors in the same locality. 
In May, too, in our English woods the 
wood sorrel is in bloom, and its delicate 
white petals veined with purple are fami- 
liar to sylvan ramblers. We have also a 
yellow species, a trailing sorrel less com- 
mon; but the Cape species, pink, white, 
crimson, yellow, are as abundant as prim- 
roses are in our English copses. More so, 
indeed, because not growing in clumps from . 
one large root, they overspread the ground 
without .a vacant space, and look so soft 
and lovely and attractive that you feel dis- 
posed to make a couch of the bank and 
bury your face in the. exquisite masses. 
But they are too beautiful to be crushed, 
and you fill your hands instead. After 
the first rains the countless bulbs push up 
their scapes with incredible rapidity ; then 
follow lilies, irises, gladioli, numeroug spe- 
cies of amaryllis, and many other plants 
for which the winter temperature is suffi- 
ciently mild. And all these are “wild 
flowers,” of which you may gather armsful 
and no one say you “nay.” Of pelargo- 
niums there are 174 known species in Cape 
Colony, and most of them continue to 
blossom the whole year round. Some be- 
come veritable shrubs of 9 or 10 ft. high, 
with stems as big as your wrist. So, im 
fact, do the heliotropes and verbenas, one 
species on Table Mountain having stems 
stout enough to be suggestive of cultiva- 
tion for timber! This is the season of the 
yuccas also, which, with their long and 
splendid spikes of white blossom, grow to 
a height of 15 or 20 ft., and are very con- 
spicuous in the gardens. As far as vegeta- 
tion is concerned, we may thus say there 
are two springs in South Africa, viz., the 
actual spring of lengthening days and in- 
creasing heat, which is our autumn, and the 
floral spring, which follows the autumn 
rains, which is our spring’also. : 
During the latter there are more of the 
delicate herbaceous plants like the wood 
sorrel and other lovely little native species 
too numerous to mention. These cannot 
stand the summer droughts. But during 
the former—the orthodox spring—the char 
racteristic plants of the country thrive ; 
bulbs, tubers, and the thick+leaved kinds 
which have adapted themselves to the cli- 
mate. Everywhere abound the fleshy- 
bs hi ee 
leaved cacti, opuntias, and mesembryan- 
themums (of which there are several hun- 
dred species) and others which store up 
moisture in themselves and exist through- 
out the driest season. An agriculturist told 
~me that during seasons of drought sheep— 
and especialls ewes with lambs—feed freely 
on the mesembryanthemums, whose succu- 
lence enables the animals to do without 
water. Remarkably abundant are the 
various species of these mesembryanthe- 
mums which serve so useful a purpose; 
some are very large, as big as a great cab- 
bage, and with brilliant blossoms. In some 
regions vast tracts are covered with these 
succulent plants to the exclusion of almost 
all other vegetation, and they present a 
brilliant mass of colors where but a few 
weeks ago the ground was blackened by 
the summer drought as if a fire had swept 
over it. Among the succulent classes, cr 
those which store moisture in either leaves 
or stems, must be included the euphorbias, 
one of which commonly known as Finger- 
poll, holds so much moisture that in times | 
of serious drought it is cut up as food for 
cattle. Some of the aloes strike one a3 
almost grotesque in their form. They have 
an arboreal stem of hugé proportions, sur- 
mounted by a mere tuft of leaves, which 
look ridiculously unimportant on this vast 
trunk. There was one in the Botanical Gar-~ 
dens at Cape Town whose stem was like 
ac, immense barrel in form, the very largest 
“hogshead,” out of which grew a’ trivial 
bunch of greenery. But those massive‘ 
trunks possess an excessively hard and 
dense exterior to defy evaporation, while 
within they are soft and spongy, holding * 
sufficient moisture to sustain the roots of « 
the bulby shrub in the driest of seasons. » 
In the moist low-lying lands the arum 
abounds. You can trace the course of a 
stream by the line of its pure white spathes 
which, at a little distance look as if a sta- 
tioner had been tearing up his entire stock 
of writing paper and scattering the pieces 
wherever he walked. As we pass through 
our greenhouses and hothouses at home we 
do not give much thought to the countries 
ta which we owe go many of our most beau- 
tiful flowering plants and shrubs; but we 
shall find that to no country so much as to. 
Africa are we indebted for them, for no 
single country of the world has contributed 
80 largely to European gardens and con. 
sorvatories as the Cape of Good Hope. To 
the botanist the Cape has been a source of 
pleasure and delight from its very first 
settlement.—The Globe, © °° ~~ : 
PHCOSOSO CS8O => ..+ 
Lord Dundonald’s garden at his: estate, 
Adare, is very much given up to Roses. 
The tree that vies with the Birch in . 
Spring beauty at the bursting of the leaf _ 
is the Larch, but it grows to larger pro- 
portions than is advisable for a really, ~ 
small garden. The Laburnum is. highly 
to be recommended, and also the Catalpa, 
but this last casts rather dense shadow. 
4n apple tree is by no means to be 
despised, and in size, habit, and decora- 
tive value is hard to beati in the ‘small 
garden, besides, its fruit is useful. 
