Following my visit to the Eastern Cape of South Africa two years ago, I returned to that beautiful country to join a small group for a 2-1/2 week adventure around the Western Cape and up into the normally flower-covered hills of Namaqualand. Unfortunately, this was a very dry year, and such rains as had fallen had been followed by weeks of hot, desiccating winds, so none of the customary mass displays of flowers were much in evidence. However, thanks to our intrepid and incredibly knowledgeable trip leader Cameron McMaster, and thanks also to such local guides and companions as Hugh Clarke, Bruce Mackenzie, Mark Hawthorne, Hennie Delport, Heather Berger, Errol and Jennie Scarr, Lita Cole, and Koos and Lise Classen, we managed to make the best of it and eventually saw and photographed hundreds of species in bloom. It should be pointed out that although we did our very best to correctly identify all the species we saw, there are just so many very similar-looking species in many of the families represented in this area (Asteraceae: almost 1000 species, Ericaceae: over 700, Mesembryanthemaceae, Fabaceae, Iridaceae: over 600 each) that without keys and a lot more time than we had, it was often difficult to be as precise and accurate as we would have liked. And guidebooks, although welcome and very useful, include only the more common species. Therefore the identifications that are presented here are not in any way guaranteed to be correct. In addition to the many areas of natural vegetation that we explored between Cape Town and Springbok, we also visited four lovely gardens, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town, the Karoo Botanical Gardens at Worcester, the Kokerboom Succulent Nursery at Vanrhynsdorp, and the Ramskop Nature Reserve at Clanwilliam. This is a ridiculously long photo gallery, but we went out all day every day for seventeen days in a row, and I forgive anyone who throws up their hands after about five pages. For an essay on the flora of the Western Cape, click here. Two other ancillary galleries go along with this one, the first with pictures of other species that are so far unidentified is here, and the second with pictures that were taken in several of the botanical gardens/nurseries that we visited which is here. A plant list for this photo gallery is here.

Liparia splendens
Fabaceae

The Photographer
Next to a quiver tree

Halleria lucida
Scrophulariaceae

Agathosma ciliaris
Rutaceae