The Cactus Trip Diaries

Wednesday, 10 October 2012 – around Rosh Pinah

As you’ll have noticed, we often use one day to travel from A to B, with stops along the way and then one or two more days to take a look in the area. And so a day around Rosh Pinah had been planned. But, as we woke up we realised that there’s not much scope for plant stops around Rosh Pinah. It is a mining town that had grown at quite a pace in recent years. In the main, the people staying in the accommodation where we were staying was more aimed at long-term stays for individuals or families, self catering with a bar and restaurant for those who preferred to eat out, aimed at contractors working in the middle of nowhere in the mining industry and related businesses.

We had come in from the north  and would leave tomorrow to the south, so the natural thing to do would be to explore to the east and / or the west – except that to the west is the Sperrgebiet, translated into English – the barred / blocked area. And the inadequate maps that we had with us did not suggest anything specifically to aim  for.

First of all we wanted to see Pachypodium namaquanum that is known to grow in the area and again on the other side of the Oranje Rivier in South Africa. It is said to grow on the highest mountains, facing to the north. Around Rosh Pinah, the mountains were mainly to the west and it was impossible to get clear views to their northern sides with binoculars to try to spot a few of them. Any tracks in that direction seemed to lead to gates to mines. No go.

Lithops karasmontana subs. eberlanzii, C149 to be precise, used to be known under the name Lithops erniana var. witputzensis and has its Type Locality in the area ‘110 km SSE of Aus’. Yesterday we had passed by a track off to the east with signage for the Witputs Farm aka Witputz – we found a whole range of alternative spellings of names of Dutch and in Namibia, German origin. Obviously the language is still evolving and is evidence of as much diversity as is found for different reasons in the flora. And so a plan evolved to see where that track would take us in that direction. The time/date stamps of the images taken tell part of the story. We hit the turning at 9:18 and headed east until some 20 minutes later we spotted some nice stands of Hoodia along the side of the road – time for a leg stretch and exercising the shutter fingers.

S2650 was a good stop – I took 150 images during the three hours that we hiked in the hills to the south of the track. We did find a small population of Lithops and due to the assumed proximity to C149, Lithops karasmontana subs. eberlanzii is the name I’ll be using until somebody who knows better tells me otherwise and helps me to understand why.

Many of the succulent plants we were seeing here were plants that we had seen before so I’ll avoid duplicates here, or list the 15 taxa I recorded here, many of them just ‘sp.’

Another plant that we saw here and on many other locations is one given the quaint common name of ‘dog’s balls’, which we quickly translated to ‘dog’s bollocks’, thus neatly side-stepping the issue of which of the five species in the genus Larryleachia (formerly Trichocaulon and before that in Hoodia and originally the genus Stapelia) might be appropriate for the plant in front of our camera lenses. We tended to use the Latin name Larryleachia cactiformis that is so appropriate to any of these plants that superficially resemble globular or semi-columnar cacti. From a bit of reading on the internet and in Doreen Court’s The Succulent Flora of Southern Africa it seems that the five species differ mainly in flower detail, and as we saw none in flower ….. Some were larger than others, but that could just be a matter of age or environmental factors and some formed clumps while others were solitary, but it may well be that these are not reliable diagnostic features. Here is one photographed at S2650, showing the seedhorns that confirm that we missed its flowering.

As mentioned earlier, this stop was prompted by Hoodia’s seen at the side of the track. I’d better explain that again, we use this name out of ignorance for any smallish ceroid-like Stapeliad – again no flowers seen here. Here is what prompted the stop:

There are no images worth publishing from S2651, just blurred images of a family of deer (klip bokken?) crossing the road at speed) so I’ll finish today with another plant from S2650, again seen before and again in the future over quite a range:

The lovely velvety texture of the leaves ensured that it would get photographed again on many occasions.

Tomorrow we cross back into South Africa – lots more paper filling to look forward to?

Tuesday, 9 October 2012 – Luderitz to Rosh Pinah

Enthused by yesterday’s plants, particularly those seen at S2641, we set of to a spot suggested by friends in the UK, S2644, 2 km from Haalenberg, north of the B4 Luderitz to Aus road. Again, I’ll limit myself to showing you my favourite pics.

My scribbles from the day say that Juttadinteria simpsonii is reported from here, but did we see it? Would I recognise it? The first run through of the images had a unidentified plant here, small mesemb with knobbly leaves. Back in the UK I entered the Juttadinteria name into Google and the images that appeared suggest that we did indeed see it:

I’m now quite good at recognising Sarcocaulon patersonii, but what was the creamy white-flowered plant here? Back to the Bushman Candles and there it was: Monsonia crassicaulis from the Haalenberg area!

It’s always nice to see plants that you have grown in your green house in the UK growing here in nature. That was the case here with Lithops karasmontana ssp. eberlanzii at S2644, near the location where Desmond Cole found C398, C399 and C400. It looked very dehydrated and my instincts were to water it, but that is probably how I used to kill the Lithops at home: watering to encourage the new leaf pair to grow, before the old leaf pair had withered away.

We moved on to S2645, still along the C13 and quite near, south of Aus and after some searching found the plant that David had seen here on a previous visit: Crassula mesembryanthemopsis. The plants were almost completely covered in sand so after the initial ‘as we found them’ pictures, it was down on hands and knees to blow away some of the sand to expose the plants:

Also at this location I photographed this plant:

The leaves of this small shrub suggest a Mesemb, but without flowering parts it’s difficult to confirm. The spines looked unusual until I learned in Mesembs of the World that there is a group, Group 13, of Ruschia-like Shrubby Mesembs, so that narrows it down a bit … to about 241 taxa!! Eberlanzia sedoides might be a candidate? This is a monotypic genus but 26 names have been used and are now called Ruschia and placed in  the subgenus Spinosae. I’ll have to load this image up to iSpot to see if anyone there can give a more positive ID. [PS: Most impressive! In less then an hour of posting this observation on iSpot, there was a confirmed ID! Ruschia divaricata]

And while I’m at it I could post this image of another Mesemb photographed at S2648 that initially I had down as a Monilaria sp., until I learned that there is a whole group (group 8) of bead-leaved Mesembs, totalling 21 species in 5 genera! So which one is this?

PS – I know that some of you have subscribed to follow this blog and receive an email each time that a new posting is published BUT there are no notifications if I edit an existing page! So, do check back occasionally!

Monday, 8 October 2012 – Around Luderitz

The plants today suggest that we are heading in the right direction. Reading various books, leaflets and information on websites I have learned that we have entered the West Coast Karoo, that stretches from Luderitz, south throgh Namibia and Southern Africa. This ecoregion has been subdivided into two zones, the Namaqualand-Namib domain that we had now entered and the Southern Karoo  domain that we would visit later before returning to Cape Town.

Not only did I have to become familiar with a huge number of taxa that were new to me, but also with eco-geographical names that are usually not mapped on the road maps that we carry. These domains are subdivided again into Regions and we found ourselves in the most northern one – the Sperrgebiet, most of which is taken over by diamond mining and is not accessible to the public. The number of succulent plant taxa that occur is mind boggling and seems to vary as a precise number depending on who you follow. One source states that ‘the region is host to, about half of the world’s 10’000 succulent species. About 67 genera and 1,940 species are endemic to this ecoregion’.  Despite the many images we took, we hardly scratched the surface, sticking perhaps to those plants that we are familiar with in Europe and in California. In Europe this tends to mean smaller plant that have to be grown indoors or in a greenhouse, where space is at a premium.

I have selected a few images of plants that I am familiar with or that intrigue me, even though I can’t name them, in some cases, not even the plant Family that they belong to. Enjoy, and do suggest names where you have a fairly firm idea of what they might be.

For the first stop of the day we became ‘normal’ tourists and visited Kolmanskop, a ghost town, frozen in time. In 1908 the first diamond in this area was found here and attracted many people to create the small town in typical style – this was a German colony at the time. After World War 1, the diamond supply became exhausted and in 1958 operations closed down, allowing the wind and sands to reclaim the village. The following two images show succulent plants that have benefitted from this desertification. I can’t even pin them down to a Plant Family. The website iSpot came to my help and suggested Brownanthus marlothii for one of them. A quick look in Mesembs of the World confirms that this is an excellent match. Thank you.

At the next stop, S2640, near by, things became a bit more fair in that the Sarcocaulons were in leaf and flower.

I had a copy of the excellent Bushman Candles book by the late Charles Craib and John Lavranos and as a result I hazard a guess for the name: Sarcocaulon or Monsonia patersonii. These really are tough customers, as they were flowering in a very strong wind (we were wearing coats & jumpers again and running after hats that had been blown off) while being blasted by quite large sand particles. How do such delicate paper thin flower petals survive that?

S2641 was a revelation – we were back in plant land. Here are just a few.:

[I had provisionally identified the plant above as an Argyroderma sp, but Derek Tribble has since suggested Crassula elegans subsp. namibensis which I’m happy to accept. If ever I need to give a talk about parralel evolution, this and an Argyroderma sp. will be a good example. Thanks Derek!]

I was really taken with the next plant, without any idea of an ID. Then while browsing through the Bushman Candles book, there it was, in the Photography in habitat chapter!

So that should be another tick on the list of identified plants – if I got it right!

No plants were photographed at S2642, at the Dias Point National Monument – a) there were none to be seen and b) I was afraid that my camera would be blown clean out of my hands!

So we had time for another stop on the way back to the hotel, and saw these nice plants in flower:

Sunday, 7 October 2012 – Keetmanshoop to Luderitz

Today was yet another driving day, with four stops (S2635 to S2638). By now we had become used to seeing few plants, but we were heading back towards South Africa where on one day we had seen more different taxa than in all our time in Namibia. And when you do find a plant, like this Sarcocaulon, it has no leaves, flowers or fruits to try to decide what name to give it.  But, to put things into perspective, we would not have seen the plants that we have seen here if we had stayed south of the border.

Yes, we were back nearing the coast!

A bit farther along it seemed that the fog that we had experienced in Swakopmund was also back. As we heard the noise similar to hail stones hitting the car, another traffic sign explained the noise.

The sign was ambiguous; was this a maximum speed recommendation or the speed of the sand particles peppering the car? Probably both, as well as the distance over which we would experience this!

Saturday, 6 October 2012 – Windhoek to Keetmanshoop

[written ‘live’, on the road]

Just a brief sign of life after today’s 500 km drive in the heat, 33C, back south. Nothing much to see plant wise – I took just 3 pictures, all three of the pickup truck in front of us, full of people in the back – must have been a taxi!

This is a rather barren area in terms of succulent plants, as we had already taken pictures of the Aloe dichatoma and other unknown Aloe sp (growing to over 2 m (6ft) tall, a few days ago as we headed north.

Even some of the hotels that claim to have internet facilities, don’t or charge too much. It’s still very much the same as Alain & Greet found it in 2010. Looking back through Alain’s Diary (in Dutch) we have seen much the same places, but also travelled some alternative routes and may be saw something different as a result.

Tomorrow we head west to Luderitz and after a few days, go south to Rosh Pinah and then cross at Sendelingdrif back into RSA.

We’re on our second car – nothing wrong with the first one, except that as we approached Windhoek, the service light came on. We were told that in Windhoek, it takes up to a week to get the service done. Instead they gave us a replacement – another Nissan XTrail. We checked back with them today as we noticed that this car has a service due in 2000 km time – before today’s 500 km stretch. The next Budget place is in Luderitz – could they ring ahead and book us in for a service there or get another replacement with enough km to the next service to get us to the end of the trip? This seemed to be an impossibility. They said that we would be OK for another 2,000 km before the next service is absolutely essential, so we’ll make it the problem for the Budget Dealer when we need to – in South Africa.

Today we are staying in the Canyon Hotel in Keetmanshoop, rather than the Quiver Tree. As you can see – it has wifi, which today is more important to me than stroking the Cheetahs again.

I promise to do catch ups of proper Diary reports when I get back to the UK.

[PS: from the UK, playing catch up; I’m getting there!]

Friday, 5 October 2012 – Kamanjab to Windhoek

This was another ‘driving day’ as, from the farthest point north of our trip, we headed back south.

All images, mainly taken from the car, all along the track are filed under S2634 and include this picture to show that I haven’t lost my sense of humour yet.

In Chile, it is not unusual to find some really old cars permanently parked along the road. We joke that this must have been Ritter’s car, as his reports from the field include a number of reports of his breakdowns. Here in South Africa broken down cars seem to be cleaned up / recycled quickly. Anyway, Toyotas don’t break down!

Thursday, 4 October 2012 – Khorixas to Kamanjab

It’s only 108 km if you take the shortest road between the two towns. But if you want to see Fat Trees, it’s recommended to take a detour over the Grotebergpas, increasing today’s drive to 271 km.

We had a nice relaxed breakfast and took some pictures around our accommodation at the iGowati Country Hotel, Khorixas, the sort of place that when you see it on the internet, you find that it’s outside our budget, but when we arrived late yesterday afternoon, they were prepared to let us have beds at a fixed price per person, irrespective of the number of rooms we wanted – so we had one chalet each! and within budget, including breakfast!

We did not have to go back as far as last night’s poor light stop for more Welwitschia images, as these plants were now quite plentiful.  I had already read about the beetles that live in apparent symbiosis with the plant and after some stirring of the papery seed covers had soon stirred up some beetle activity:

Aloe flowers poking their heads out above the grasses had proven to be relatively easy to spot from a moving car, but here the large number that suddenly appeared seems unusual. It was next to a small village and I wonder if long ago these plants had been planted here and been cultivated for their medical properties.

There are gaps in the stop numbers for these pictures, but that’s only because we had already seen better examples of the plants pictured elsewhere. There were a number of reports of ‘fat trees’ around the Grotebergpas’ (Large Mountain Pass) and we certainly saw a fair few – more guesses about their names. How did I do?

In addition to Fat Trees, the area is also known for some Fat Animals; Alain & Greet photographed elephants here in the area in 2010. We saw plenty of evidence of their regular visits. It seems that they use the road as their toilet! No luck in seeing the originators.

We did have one more nice surprise though as we spotted these from the car, again in fast fading light – very pleased with the camera’s light sensitivity!

Wednesday, 3 October, 2012 – Swakopmund to Khorixas

My reason for wanting to visit Namibia was to see the fog – this is one of three of the world’s main fog deserts, along with the Atacama Desert in Chile and Baja California in Mexico. All three of these deserts are found along the coast where a cold polar gulf stream flows past a landmass warmed up by the sun around the Tropic of Capricorn or (in the northern hemisphere) the Tropic of Cancer. To be more specific, I wanted to photograph the flora that relies on such regular fogs for their survival.

I knew from my visits to Chile and Baja, that the phenomenon extends for quite a distance along the coast and also to a varying extend inland, depending on the geography. If you are reading these Diaries with a map near by, you’ll see that Swakopmund is situated along the Atlantic Ocean at about 22 degrees 40′ South and you’ll remember that we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, at 23 degrees 30′ South on two days ago, so it was no real surprise that it was foggy when we walked across the B&B’s car park for breakfast. A chat with the owner confirmed that waking up to fog was typical for the area and that this might lift by late morning. The traffic sign along the coast road as we headed north said it all:

We stopped at the wreck of a stranded trawler (this area is known as the Skeleton Coast) and saw the beach covered in what looked like a succulent plant.

As we were in Africa, my first thought was that these belonged to the family Mesembryanthema-ceae or Crassulaceae, but without buds, flowers or fruits to help identification I could not decide.  I remembered seeing similar plants in the Chilean fog zone, the Chilean Bell Flower of the genus Nolana, in the Family Solanaceae, so more searching to be done. Any thoughts?

[PS: Many thanks to Derek Trible for suggesting the iSpot website, a project run jointly between the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Open University. I took a look, joined and tried them out using this plant and within the hour had a name (Zygophyllum) that, after some more Googling, fits, although there is a view that this name is synonymous with the name Tetraena clavata.]

Unlike Chile, where the fog often drifts in as low cloud, at about 400 m until it hits the coastal hills that are a significant barrier to moisture extending farther inland and rise up almost straight out of the (Pacific) Ocean, here the land is again as flat as a pancake so that with a following wind, mist and fogs can drift in for many kilometers.

To record this fact digitally, I asked for a stop and to my amazement saw a small plant that at first sight looked like a cactus!

We saw it again later on the trip and learned that these plants belong to the genus Acanthopsis, where the members are difficult to tell apart, so ‘sp.’ will do. In the Richtersveld, in days to come, I was told that this plant is known in Afrikaans as a ‘verneuk halfmens’, a ‘false Pachypodium namaquanum’ and I guess that seedlings of the Pachypodium resemble this plant. It seems a tough customer, as it was the only plant found in this part of the desert.

Nothing new to report plant wise at the next few stops which was disappointing as I had hoped to see Welwitschia mirabilis, the icon of the Namibian fog desert. I had expected to see this plant near the beach and I had location data of plants growing in a protected area with one, in a cage. We dislike such artificial conditions so, with limited time, I suggest that we’d look for these plants growing in their natural environment. As the day went on and we drove farther away from the coast, I wondered if I had made the right choice.

We passed a village with souvenir stall along the road and with local Damara people in their costumes selling home-made jewelry and pottery.

Eunice asked the ladies if they would pose with her for a picture. No problem!

At our next stop, it was back to succulent plants, or rather pachycauls, fat stemmed trees.

Again, I’m completely out of my depth on names, so this is my best guess and a reminder to carry a pen and notebook into the field and write down the names suggested by friends as they are given. It’s not a plant I would grow back in the UK.

Light was failing as, around 17:00 hrs we were approaching Khorixas. I was dozing in the back seat, as usual, when Eunice, almost immediately followed by Cliff and David shouted ‘Welwitschia – STOP!’  And there they were, growing just a few meters from the road in large numbers. Fading light was our only problem. We decided to take the best pictures possible now – we could always come back tomorrow for more, if needed.

Our excitement was cooled a bit when, soon after continuing our journey, we picked up a puncture.

Later, at our hotel I learned that the town of Khorixas was previously known as Welwitsch, after the Austrian botanist / explorer Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch. The Welwitchia Primary and Secondary Schools in town remain as a tribute to the good Doctor who found the plants both in what is now northern Namibia and southern Angola.

Tuesday, 2 October 2012 – Windhoek to Swakopmund

At least today’s scenery was a bit more varied than yesterday and various animals helped to keep us alert, like these baboons

near S2610 we saw these Aloes:

By S2612 the scenery had changed from flat to hilly as we started our descend down the Gamsberg Pass and began to see the first ‘Fat Trees’ which were so loved by my fellow travellers. I’m not so sure, but judge for yourself:

… but today the animals made the day

until we got to the coast and the famous Dune 7: