On Wednesday we (Jane, Chris, and I) drove to Jonaskop to check out plants in our experimental garden there, and to see the effects of a fire that burned on the mountain in mid-April. I may post a few fire photos later, but for now, I thought I'd share a map showing our route (hit the plus arrow several times to zoom in enough to see the blue track in the southwestern corner of the cape) and a photo of one of our plants, Protea punctata. Click on the image to see a larger version in a popup window.I've been lucky with the weather so far. Normally it's rainy this time of year, but since I arrived last Wednesday, it's been bright and sunny. Today we have clouds, and tomorrow we may have a little rain, but so far the weather has been very cooperative.
Survivorship in the Jonaskop garden has been pretty good. Plants are smaller than at Kirstenbosch, but we haven't lost any at Jonaskop since mid-April. We'll count survivors at Kirstenbosch this afternoon. Since I wasn't here earlier, I can't even guess what survivorship has been since then, but about twice as many plants died at Kirstenbosch as at Jonaskop. That's not at all what I would have expected, since the environment at Jonaskop seems much harsher and there's actual soil here at Kirstenbosch. But I guess it just goes to show that growing plants in an environment that matches where they occur naturally is easier than growing them somewhere else, even if it seems benign to us humans.
View Jonaskop --13 May 2009 in a larger map
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