Wildflowers at Cape Columbine

To the West Coast Mall for a mammoth food shop, then we went to Cape Columbine. The Ungardener misses the sea, and I love to see what is in flower.

Combing the shore for treasure. Sea shells and sea-urchin’s empty green pumpkin shells, a handful of pebbles, and some Kelp. Kelp that washes up on the beach after winter storms. Lives out its life underwater, rooted on the sea bed. An underwater forest, which can be seen again as far away as the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Did I mention that the water is cold? Bringing fish. I was sadly combing the shore for plastic flotsam. And discarded snarls of nylon from weekend fishermen. It is a picnic site - there are bins to put the garbage in!

Cape Columbine is a nature reserve, on the coast, just outside the tiny village of Paternoster. Once a subsistence fishing village. Now filled with holiday homes. Named after the British wooden snow brig, which was wrecked there in 1829.

From Paternoster  Urban legend has it that the SS Lisboa (1910) was laden with a large quantity of red wine, which stained the sea. Fortunately, a large number of unscathed barrels which washed ashore, were buried by the locals and retrieved much later after exasperated custom officials had finally returned home!

Columbine was the first lighthouse to receive all three navigational safety features, i.e., a light, a fog signal and a radio beacon. It was the first lens system designed for use with a 4kW incandescent electric lamp on the South African Coast. All prior installations had been designed for wick or petroleum vapour burners. 

1st October 1936 was the day that light blazed out to the ships at sea. The last manned lighthouse built on the South African coast.

Bietou -  Chrysanthemoides monilifera. We have one growing near our front door. It has black berries, which the birds love, so they donated a plant to the last garden. I brought cuttings with me and ours is now a substantial shrub. But growing in the salt sea breezes, these plants hug the ground. Found along the coast of southern AND tropical Africa. African bush daisy to you?

This succulent, with round leaves, creeping along the ground. Delicately formed and marked, lemon yellow petals. Must remain nameless, can’t find it in my West Coast flower books.

Just this one plant was a cushion of pink. The others were just starting to shimmer with colour. We call this huge variety of plants vygies. Sorry not sure which one. Vygie meaning small fig, but more of a First People, subsistence fruit, than one which is actually eaten today. Jewel weed?

You don’t like brash coloured pelargoniums? You DO like brash coloured pelargoniums? This one ‘does like to be beside seaside!’ Pelargonium fulgidum. Luminous red. Stop, stop!  One of my mother’s favourites.  Found on granite, rocky outcrops from the Orange River in the north, down to Yzerfontein and the Postberg spring flower reserve in the south.

Where the Pelargonium fulgidum lives

Late on a winter afternoon, with a salty mist beginning to roll in from the sea. A bitterly cold wind, couldn’t quite hold the camera steady, between the wind buffeting, and me shivering. That is why the lighthouse leans, just a little. There are spotted Lachenalia leaves, with the first few flowers. And sheaves of leaves heralding the spring bulbs on the way. We live, very happily, close to the glory of the West Coast’s spring flowers. Namaqualand is calling …travelling-to-Skilpad and again Namaqua-national-park

Pictures by Jurg and Diana, words by Diana of Elephant's Eye