A blooming good year for daisies
Visitors claim this year s West Coast flower extravaganza is the best yet, but an ecologist has a different view, and it s all to do with timing
Perhaps it s the post-lockdown euphoria talking, ’ but social media has been abuzz with proclamations that this year s flowers along ’ the West Coast are the best yet.
For expert ecologist Prof Bob Scholes from Wits University, however, they are just as “mind-blowing as in previous years, and he s ” ’ not convinced by the anecdotal evidence.
There is no substantive data to say this “year was better than previous years,” he said, before sharing some of his ecological insights into this world-class attraction.
It also isn t the case that this year s rainfall ’ ’ reprieve after an intense drought has made the flowers bloom more profusely.
While variability has occurred over the years, it is usually to do with the timing of the rainfall.
Timing is critical - when you get the right “amount at the right time, you get a big flowering,” he said, adding that even when the climate is consistent from one winter to the next, there can be a phenomenon in ecology whereby one year will have more abundant flowers than the next.
That, however, is not a common phenomenon among flowering daisies and normally occurs more among fruit tree species - and in fact this year is likely to see trees “laden with more fruit than normal in northern ” parts of the country. According to Scholes, fruit trees and other larger species sometimes do this to “saturate the predators ”.
They sometimes put on a massive amount “of fruit and it s associated with stress. It s like ’ ’ a last fling of the dice in which they overproduce ”.
But, in flowering daisies, there isn t really a “’ mechanism for carrying that over in something as small as these flowering plants ”.
Yet another flipside to the anecdotal claims by people that they ve witnessed the most ’ “flowers in the best year ”, is how the daisies “have stolen all the limelight.
Says Scholes: What makes the West Coast “ecologically and biologically so amazing is not the colour displays but the diversity - but most people miss that. They go to locations and see thousands of hectares of Namaqualand daisies on disturbed land.”
People ogled at the carpets of flowers laid out before them.
However, in undisturbed areas, you can “find 20 or 30 different species in a few square metres, and many of those species only occur right there ”.
The endemic biodiversity is the richest in the world, adds Scholes.
A real jewel of the area was the variety of succulent species.
Scholes points out that 80% of all succulent flora is from the West Coast of Southern Africa.
You can see one patch of flowers the size of “my office, and that could be the total population of that particular vygie,” he explains.
There is also the incredible array of geophytes (plants that grow from bulbs).
There is amazing diversity in that too,” “says Scholes, and many of the world s plants “’ which are propagated from bulbs, like gladioli, are South African endemics from that area - it is horticulturally spectacular.”
So, it s not just about masses and masses of “’ daisies. The discerning tourist will know what to look for.”