CONOTHON 5: TRACKING DOWN CONOPHYTUM IN SOUTH AFRICA, MAY 2011

摘要

The weather forecast remained poor for the next day but once again we were lucky and escaped the worst of it and somehow stayed dry. It was however time to start heading back south towards Cape Town, taking our time with several planned stops en route. The hills at Kouberg are the only known locality of C.lithopsoides ssp. koubergense and this was a plant we wanted to see in habitat. The farmer was happy for us to look for the plants and having expected a long, hard, slog up the main berg, we were surprised to find the Cono in large numbers on a small ridge on the lower quartz slopes (Fig 31.84). Located in small patches of quartz gravel amongst large blocks, the plants were in full flower but most noticeable here was that the colour and pattern ofthe plant bodies varied so much in a small area. These hills are already well botanised so we did not think we would add anything by climbing to the top and our time would be better spent exploring somewhere new. Instead, we took advantage of the extra time we had on our hands to explore a low-lying patch of quartzitic gneiss in amongst sandy plains, close to Gamoep. Effectively hidden from the main track this was a target we identified using Google Earth back in the UK.