My year of disas
If there’s is one thing the Covid-enforced lockdown revealed to Dr Morné du Plessis, CEO of WWF South Africa, it’s that there are important lessons to be learnt from the natural world.
My story starts a year before lockdown. In 2019, at the end of March, I set out to find 60 different disa orchid species as a way of marking an upcoming birthday. I took on the quest as loosely as someone who, after an unguarded conversation, finds themselves on the starting line of the Comrades Marathon months later.
The main problem was that I was a rank amateur at identifying plants. Over the next weeks and months, I set out to gather as much knowledge as possible from books, articles and scientific papers. South Africa has an enviable collection of excellent natural history books, and I was constantly filled with admiration for the people who have devoted their lives to researching such narrow niches of nature.
Looking for disas can be challenging. The well-known red disa ( Disa uniflora) is easily spotted in its natural habitat on top of Table Mountain early each year, but there are others that have a completely different approach to life. Some species are fire-dependent and flower only in the first season after fire; a handful of species flower better in the second year after fire; a few more might flower for a few seasons after a burn. This means that some localised species might flower only once every eight to 20 years, depending on the natural fire cycle in that particular patch of fynbos.
For me, much of the exhilaration of looking for flowering disas lay in the planning. It took countless hours of research in my spare time to acquaint myself with the 140 or so disa species found in South Africa, and the ecological requirements of each. I began to look at landscapes through a different lens: geology, soil type, drainage lines and altitude were most often the best clues for locating a particular species.
The night before going in search of a certain species, I would cram facts into my head as if sitting for an important exam. As I drifted off to sleep, I would close my eyes and imagine spotting something unusual. As I approached, it would turn into a rare Disa sabulosa, for instance.
Before first light, I would set off in my car to get to a point from which to criss-cross mountain habitats on foot. Close to sunset, I would calculate whether I had enough time to scour yet another slope before it would be too dark to see anything. And each time
I got back to the car, my first instinct was to frantically page through my field library for confirmation of a detail or a difference that might separate two closely related species. Only then would I reach for some water and a bite to eat. A day deliriously well spent.
The sheer exhilaration of discovering these rare and fragile flowers proved to be quite intoxicating. I would sit down beside the plant and take out my magnifying glass to get a closer look at this miracle of evolution. I felt like the luckiest person alive, being so close to something so perfectly precious. Those moments filled me with a deep sense of
responsibility given the precarious nature of the little plant’s future.
But as in real life, there were days when I covered many kilometres and a couple thousand metres in elevation gain without finding what I was looking for. The beauty of such a day, however, was never lost on me as there were always other plants, insects and birds to draw my attention.
Those walks made me realise that for us to love something, we have to know it. Such is the case with the incredible biodiversity we have in South Africa. Of course, on an intellectual level I already knew this, but my disa quest in the year prior to lockdown brought it home to me in a very real way.
Even though I managed to complete my disa task before late March 2020, when lockdown forced us into our homes, I was acutely aware of what I was missing outside. I consoled myself with the idea that we were “giving nature a break”. Now, a year later – thinking back to everything that has happened – we know how much better it is to live with clear skies and with nature coming back. We’ve learnt that collective action can rapidly turn things around: Even the most polluted skies in the most industrialised cities turned blue for a few months. If only we could harness this awakening to deliver to our children the future they deserve.
Indeed, there are ways to adapt fast to a future worth living without having to sacrifice our economy, not least by switching to renewable energy and valuing a natural world that sustains us in so many ways.
We should wake up each morning glowing with the knowledge that South Africa is unsurpassed in natural resources. Our currency might lie spread-eagled on the mat as the pound, dollar and euro prance around the ring with their gloves in the air, but what they cannot take away from us is our natural wealth.
Only we can.
For us to champion our riches, we have to fall in love with those riches. My year of disas taught me that.
After many hours of plotting and planning to add the last two disas to my list, I set out in late February to find them. First, to the north-flowing rivers of the Little Karoo in search of Disa cardinalis, then to the high, southeast facing slopes of the Outeniqua Mountains for Disa gladioliflora.
It was the latter, particularly, that confirmed the value of planning. My mother is in her 90s and I wanted her to experience just a smidgen of the exhilaration and awe I had experienced finding each of the previous 59 disa species. To do that, I had to locate an easily accessible gladioliflora. So I searched Google Maps for an approach road that would take us above 800 m in altitude, to the exact south-east facing fynbos habitat of this happy disa. One such place beckoned inland from Knysna. After having covered more than
2 000 km on foot over some of the most spectacular mountains, along river courses and vleis, and through valleys, I now strolled along with my mom towards where a single Disa gladioliflora flowered beautifully. As it was with each of the previous 59 species, it felt as if
I was the first person to ever set eyes on such perfection.
I was overcome with a deep sense of gratitude for having become sensitised to the presence of such diversity and splendour. But rather than feeling the thrill of accomplishment, I experienced an unexpected sense of immense personal insignificance. It was as if I was looking up at the night sky and seeing 60 stars I knew by name, while millions of others looked on silently…