Strelitzia reginae

How blessed we are to have Crane Flowers (Strelitzia reginae) growing in the wild here in the Eastern Cape! They are popular flowers for both private and public gardens too. This specimen grows in a public car park at Kenton-on-Sea. Many readers may be more familiar with the common name, Bird-of-Paradise Flower.

Also in this family is the Wild Banana (Strelitzia nicolai), which looks a little like a washed-out version of the above, although in its natural habitat – the Transkei coast in this case – they too have a beauty all their own.

The clear architectural form of the crane flower stands out against the sky.

While the gorgeous colouring is highlighted by the sun shining on this one in the Ecca Pass Nature Reserve. The flowers stand out above the foliage and are bright orange with purple edges and bright blue tongues.

Such is the beauty and robustness of this plant that it has found its way into gardens around the world. Both the leaves and flowers are popular components of floral arrangements.

Bees are the most common pollinators of this plant. A large clump of Strelitzia reginae growing on the pavement opposite our back gate is regularly munched by the cattle that roam through our suburb from time to time. I must nonetheless look out for seeds during the course of the next few months for the plants we had in our garden eventually – even though they are drought resistant – succumbed to the prolonged drought we have experienced. I would love to have them growing here again.

As one drives from Grahamstown towards Fort Beaufort on the R67, one passes over the Ecca Pass, which takes its name from the Ecca River, a tributary of the Great Fish River. The pass has considerable geological, historical and botanical value, with several interesting things of note. One is that the road over the pass is one of several military roads originally built by Andrew Geddes Bain in the 1800s. This was known as the Queen’s Road.

Another is that Bain became so interested in the rocks uncovered during the construction of the road that he worked out the stratigraphy of what we now know as the Karoo System and named the rock type at the foot of the pass the ‘Ecca Group’. This comprises approximately 250-million-year-old sedimentary blue shales and mudstones. Most exciting is that he found several fossil reptiles. Yet another interesting aspect of this area is that it is one of the few protected areas of the Albany thicket, which is a dense, spiny shrub land abundant in succulents. Among these are some very prickly euphorbias, such as this one, which might be Euphorbia heptagona (Bokmelkbos).

The Ecca Nature Reserve was proclaimed in 1985. Although trails were initially laid out and marked, these are now difficult to locate. Sadly, the bronze plaque on a cairn at the top of the Ecca Pass that was erected in 1964 by the Historical Monuments Commission in honour of Andrew Geddes Bain has since been removed by vandals. That aside, it is easy to see that one of the main plants in the Ecca Nature Reserve is Spekboom (Portulacaria afra).

Interesting flowering plants to see there include aloes.

The Strelitzia reginae (Crane flower) look particularly beautiful seen in their natural habitat.

Much lower, on the ground, one might see the very attractive flowers of the Common Gazania (Gazania krebsiana) peeping through the vegetation.

Post script: As not everyone reads the comments when coming across an older post, I am including a list of Bain’s construction works that I posted in one of the comments below. He was responsible for the following: