Fire Heath

Today is Wednesday - which means walking on Table Mountain and ABC Wednesday. Luckily one of the first flowers I saw in the fynbos on the slopes of Chapman's Peak above Hout Bay this morning was a Fire Heath (Erica cerinthoides). Apart from the fact that they glow red like a flame, they come up after a fire in the veld. And fynbos is famous for being a fire-dependent vegetation type.

For more fs, see ABC Wednesday.

Endemic ericas

Table Mountain has many endemic plants - plants that only grow there and nowhere else in the world - including several ericas (heathers). One such erica is the Box Heath (Erica pyxidflora) which we saw on our walk this morning in the Kalk Bay mountains (part of the Table Mountain chain). Erica abietina the Red Heath, is also a Table Mountain endemic.
For more ABC Wednesday posts, click here.