Dear Readers, today we spent the whole day in the Kamiesberg mountains above Kamieskroon, looking for interesting plants and for anything else we can find. The Kamiesberg range contains many granite ‘inslebergs’ – these are isolated granite domes which act almost as islands. Many plants can be found only on one of these inslebergs, so it makes plant hunting something of a joy. One particular flower that we found is so extraordinary that I’m going to leave it till last.

This succulent only flowers in the afternoon when it’s sunny – the rest of the time its leaves and flowers face down in a rather sad manner.

This is Gladiolus alatus, a beautiful red gladiolus that seems to love the granitic soil

Honestly, some of the ‘rock gardens’ are so beautiful that you’d think they’d been planted.

I sat on a rock under a tree and this bird turned up – a Large-billed Lark, if I’m not mistaken, and certainly living up to his name.

But when we got back to the hotel, we were shown this extraordinary flower. This is Anacampseros filamentosa, and it flowers for just one hour a day, at dusk. Sorry for the blurry photo! Low light and shaky hand.

With such a short flowering window, the question was always ‘what on earth pollinates this plant’? Well, one answer is ‘itself’ – the plant automatically self-pollinates for most of the time. This is not a great long term strategy, as cross pollination ensures genetic variation, but we did see some small flies around the plant, so maybe it is insect pollinated sometimes. Nature is so full of mysteries!

Tomorrow we head back south to the town of Vanrhynsdorp, with a visit to a private reserve to spot some plants. It’s going to be nearly 40 degrees, so let’s see how we do!