Cycads in South Africa
Tony's report on the 1993 Cycad Conference
held in Pretoria, South Africa, a paradise for enthusiasts of these
ancient plants.
Tony King, 34 Keats Avenue, Romford, Essex, RM3 7AR, U.K.
Chamaerops No. 12, published online 23-09-2002
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Left: Encephalartos middleburgensis
Above: Encephalartos transvenosus in habitat, Modjadji
Below: The sinuous trunks of Encephalartos middleburgensis
A love of cycads coupled with a long-held desire
to visit South Africa came to fruition this summer when the third
International Conference on Cycad Biology was hosted by the Cycad
Society of South Africa, in Pretoria.
As is usual with such events, an attractive series
of pre- and post-conference tours was organised, which would provide
an ideal opportunity to see a little of the country.
I joined fellow EPS members Jacques Deleuze and
Andrew Shaw for the flight to Johannesburg, exchanging mid-summer
for mid-winter in my first journey across the equator. We arrived
at Jan Smuts airport early in the morning and were warmly welcomed
by the well-known Mrs. Cynthia Giddy. A short trip then through
the rather chilly morning air to Pretoria and our hotel to prepare
for the pre-conference tour beginning early the next day.
The 39 of us from around the world boarded the coach
on schedule bright and early for this tour, which was to last four
days, and was to take us eastwards into the Transvaal province.
Several hours later we arrived at the famous reserve at Modjadji
to see the forest of Encephalartos transvenosus that has been protected
by the local tribe and their 'Rain Queen' for many generations.
No other cycad site has such protection, and this is perhaps the
only place in South Africa where natural regeneration of any cycads
is readily occurring.
This is a truly awe-inspiring place with thousands
of cycads growing on the eastern faces of a few hillsides, many
of the plants being massive. A few individuals had 13 metre trunks
standing proudly on the hillside leaning into the steady breeze
that always seemed to be blowing. It was really something to stand
amongst such great plants, looking up into their canopy of rustling
cycad fronds! Another fact that made this such a spectacle was the
lush, green appearance of the cycads given that the area has been
suffering from drought for some 5 years. The contrast between the
cycads and the surrounding parched grasses was really striking.
The only impact on the cycads of this lack of rain
is that they are not coning and a few are falling to attack from
animals driven to eating them through drought-induced hunger. The
local conservation authority collects a percentage of seeds from
the plants (each female cone contains hundreds of seeds), and grows
them on for sale at-a small nursery on the approach to the reserve.
These are deliberately inexpensive in an attempt to reduce demand
for wild collected specimens.
From the pleasant climate of Modjadji, we made our
way to our overnight hotel in readiness for a safari in Kruger National
Park, the following day.
Not surprisingly, this proved a really exciting
event and I can only say it's more difficult than one might imagine
to spot many of the animals in the bush! A highlight of Kruger was
the occurrence of the branching Hyphanae natalensis the Doum palms,
mainly growing by watercourses. Their clumps of silvery foliage
stood out against the dry grass and scrub. A stop at a rest camp
within the park provided an opportunity to see tall plants of these
'Lala palms' at close quarters, some heavy with the large, almost
wooden fruits.
Our stop that night was just outside the town of
Nelspruit in the Lowveld, an area rich in plantations of banana,
Musa cavendishii. The hotel was ideally placed to enable us to head
for one of South Africa's national botanic gardens. With such wide
variations in climate across South Africa, several regional gardens
exist, all pulled together administratively under a national botanic
garden scheme.
The Lowveld garden is destined to become one of
the major cycad holding collections in South Africa, given its favourable
climate.
We arrived on a drizzly, dull morning and were given
a tour of the extensive and expanding collection. Many of the cycads
here have been confiscated from illegal collections and gradually;
'orchards' of cycads are being built up for seed production. One
such contained Encephalartos cerinus; a beautiful species only discovered
a couple of years ago, yet already thought extinct in the wild through
illegal collecting.
There are problems to be overcome with this concept
though. For instance, accidental crosspollination must be avoided
to prevent hybridisation. In addition, if eventual reintroduction
into the wild is planned, the source of collection of the parent
plants must be known and they must be kept separate from other individuals
of that species to retain genetic purity of the various populations
within the species.
In the seed house, a germinating bench filled with
moist sand at 25¾C was crammed with seeds of many species. Many
plants are raised here, some are sold and others distributed to
gardens within Africa.
I can't leave the subject of this garden without
a mention of a beautiful species growing here: E. inopinus, the
African 'Dioon', so named because of its resemblance to plants of
this Mexican cycad genus. Rare and wonderful, this was my first
sighting of this species.
That afternoon we were joined by an officer from
the parks department, who was to guide us through our second habitat
site, Starvation Creek, high in the Kaapsche Hoop mountains. The
coach made a laboured ascent through pine plantations to the stony
valley where E. laevifolius and lower down the valley, E. humilis
grew. Again this is a drought-affected area and no rain has fallen
for some years. The weather for our visit had now improved though
we were told that despite the warm sun we now enjoyed, temperatures
at night would fall below freezing.
Growing condition here are much harsher than at
the Modjadji location and this was reflected by the slower growth
and much narrower leaflets of the two Encephalartos growing here.
It was certainly worth the scramble over the rocks
down to reach the laevifolius plants, which again stood out in the
parched landscape with their lush appearance. E humilis proved harder
to find, its much smaller stature meaning it was well hidden in
the long grass, but once you had located one, others proved easier
to find. No coning was evident, but this is a fire climax habitat
and cone production is almost certainly stimulated by the passing
of periodic bush fires.
The final location before the actual conference
back in Pretoria was at Middelburg, again up in the hills, in a
similar, dry, rocky environment also affected by cold winter nights.
Two species grow here E. lanatus, which is fairly well represented
in collections and the much larger and rarer E. middelburgensis
Formerly considered a population of E. eugene maraisii, this species
was only described and separated in 1988 and is a lovely blue/grey-leafed
cycad. Only a couple of specimens grow at this site but they are
nonetheless impressive, multi-trunked individuals, some of whose
stems snake over the large boulders that lie about the site.
E. lanatus, by contrast, is much more plentiful
and scattered around the area. From their size, and bearing in mind
their slow rate of growth, the wild examples must be very old indeed.
No doubt the dry atmosphere and warm, sunny days enable these plants
to withstand the colder nights.
The conference itself was held in Pretoria, the
'Jacaranda City', so named because of the literally thousands of
these trees that line the streets and present a real spectacle when
in bloom. At the venue on the university campus, we were joined
by many more delegates from South Africa and the rest of the world.
It was great to finally meet so many of the people I had been corresponding
with as well as those who were till now just names read in cycad
literature.
We were treated to several presentations during
the week on cycad topics covering many areas. A midweek visit to
a cycad nursery at Patryshoek with thousands of plants destined
for sale, as well as a visit to the national botanic garden broke
up the more academic sessions.
The National Garden in Pretoria not only has a good
variety of cycads but is also home to comprehensive 'reference'
collections such as Aloes, Stapeliads and Madagascan succulents
to name just a tiny few!
One highlight of this week was a surprise birthday
party for yours truly at our hotel complete with a cake bedecked
with a certain number of candles!
The week drew to a close with a farewell banquet
held at the aquarium of the Pretoria Zoo and a number of our party
then returned home. For the 26 of us that remained, the post conference
tour was awaited and the first leg of this was a flight down to
Durban in the province of Natal.
On the shores of the Indian Ocean and at a considerably
lower altitude than Pretoria on the Transvaal, Durban has a warm,
humid, subtropical climate and is located in the summer rainfall
area of South Africa.
On arrival we visited Cynthia's nursery and collection,
which comprises not only cycads but many cacti and succulents. She
also has a rice collection of cycads that are growing as 'natural
bonsais' as well as variegated individuals. It was good to see the
nursery and we were made very welcome by Cynthia and her husband
Ted.
The one full day we had here was spent in two ways.
Firstly, visiting the extensive collections held at the Durban Botanic
Garden. Many tropical trees grow here including numerous palm species,
revelling in the moist climate. A wonderful Eucalypt caught my eye,
E. deglupta from the Philippines, named 'rainbow bark'; its trunk
certainly was marbled in a lovely array of colours.
The most famous inhabitant of the garden must surely
be the original specimen of E. woodii, discovered in 1895. I was
certainly looking forward to paying homage to these plants, which
are so impressive. They are lush plants with very deep green leaflets,
and appear to still be very healthy and vigorous, one in fact was
still in cone. It's hard to believe that all the woodii's around
the world have originated as suckers from these plants.
The cycad collection in the garden has recently
been re-organised and the visit of the Cycad '93 group was commemorated
by the planting of several plants of Cycas rumphii, and we were
all invited to place a few spadefuls of soil around the plants.
The afternoon, which was hot and sunny, saw us heading
for the Kranz Kloof reserve to see E. villosus and Stangeria eriopus
growing wild. The latter grew in open grassland in contrast to the
Encephalartos, which chose shadier, wooded conditions. In fact,
it was hard to believe that the compact Stangeria plants in the
grassland were the same species as the lush, large leaved specimens
we had seen in the botanic garden that morning. Pot holes peppered
the hillside representing the places where Stangeria had grown before
removal for use in the herbal markets of Durban and it's hard to
see how those that remained could withstand collection on this scale.
The next day and another plane, this time heading
west to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. The climate here is
more Mediterranean with a mixture of summer and winter rainfall.
Many species occur in the area around Port Elizabeth
and we were scheduled to visit sites for three of these species.
The first was north of Uitenhage in a dry scrubby area with succulent
and Acacia vegetation which included many flowering Aloes and spiny
Euphorbias
Here grew the lovely E. horridus, in a band that
stretched along the side of a hill. E. horridus is a favourite of
mine and it was great to see so many large examples. One carried
a large female cone, as blue as the leaves on the plant itself.
Certainly, the very spiteful leaves of this species make it not
one to tangle with, even accidentally. It was also interesting to
note that not far from this locality was the very small area to
which Strelitzia juncea is native, and indeed a number of these
were in flower.
A little further inland, but still on dry, red soil,
our next locality was home to yet another favourite, E. lehmannii.
Fat trunks and stiff, blue leaves typified the plants to be found
here, scattered amongst low growing spiny shrubs. Again this habitat
was shared with many succulent plants, which often grew in the shade
of the bushes. I was especially pleased to find the fans of crinkled
leaves that betrayed the presence of Boophane disticha, whose football
sized bulbs grow underground.
The trio of species for the day was completed as
we drove west to the Ladies Slipper Mountain and with it a change
in soil type and climate. Vegetation here was more lush and the
acidic soil home to Ericas and Proteas typical of the 'Fynbos' habitat.
After a short walk through flowering Protea bushes, complete with
brilliantly coloured nectar-sipping sunbirds, we arrived at a steep
cliff edge, which was home to E. longifolius. One of these plants
in fact being the 'type' from which the species was described. I
have to confess that I found these cliffs rather too steep for my
liking and this was the only species I didn't climb down to greet
personally!
The final tour leg, before returning home from Jo'burg,
was to Cape Town, firmly located in the winter rainfall region of
the Western Cape Province. True to expectations we arrived on a
cloudy, wet day leaving behind the clear, warmer weather we had
enjoyed elsewhere. It did provide suitably atmospheric conditions
for our trip to the Cape of Good Hope and the meeting point of the
Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
That night, everybody kept fingers crossed for fine
weather the following morning and believe it or not, it dawned with
clear blue sky and warm, pleasant weather which lasted all day.
First port of call was Kirstenbosch, the principal
garden under the national scheme, in the shadow of Table Mountain.
This is a spectacular and world famous garden home to a large collection
of Proteaceae and Erica, many of which were in flower. Notably spectacular
were the silver trees Leucodendrom argenteum natives of the Cape.
Despite the winter wet conditions a good cycad collection
is maintained and notable amongst these were the very rare E. latifrons,
with stiff, recurving fronds of spiky leaflets. The subterranean
E. caffer, with just a few fronds protruding from the soil carried
in one case a cone out of all proportion to the size of the plant,
its weight causing it to lie on the soil surface. It was interesting
to note species growing here in winter rainfall regimes that we
had also seen growing further east in the 'winter dry, summer wet'
areas, a real testament to the adaptability of cycads.
I should also mention here another of South Africa's
native palms that grew in the garden, Raphia australis whose claim
to fume is having the longest leaves of any plant, up to an astonishing
20 metres. It was also good to finally discover the native tree
fern, Cyathea dregei notable for its resistance to drought, fire,
and frost in habitat, though I understand it's slow growing.
I was certainly sad to leave South Africa, to which
I had been welcomed warmly by everybody, wherever I went. I could
at least take home with me memories of seeing on their home ground
some of my favourite plants, and of course the names and addresses
of all the great people from around the world who had come together
three weeks earlier and were now departing as friends.
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