Wednesday 30 April 2014

Flowers of the veld.

When you get right down to ground level one is amazed at the biodiversity of the African veld. Hundreds of flowers, some only a few millimeters in size other quite large. Almost every flower hosts insects of some kind even the tiniest.

Click to enlarge.



White cosmos, not an indigenous flower but brought here during the Anglo-Boer war, 1899 - 1903, with feed for the British horses.



From the end of February to the beginning of May these flowers bloom in their thousands and in all the colours of the rainbow.


This little flower is about as big as my thumb nail, if not smaller.


This yellow flower is a bit bigger than the one above. If you enlarge the picture you will see a tiny wasp and a shadow of a small beetle on the petal right on top.


I photographed this flower late yesterday afternoon, the flower seems to glow with an inner light.

4 comments:

Mark Kautz said...

Nice photo's. Are these Fall flowers?

Gorges Smythe said...

They look surprisingly like some of our flowers here.

Phillip said...

Cosmos are end of summer/fall flowers, the others are around most of the year until the first frost.

L. D. said...

The flowers are all wonderful. The last one reminds me of our morning glories but its structure is a little different. The coloring is the same.