Colours of Wildlife: A Visit to Bakone Malapa
Created | Updated Mar 19, 2023
A Visit to Bakone Malapa
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
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I have written before about the Bakone Malapa Open-Air Museum. I returned there on the 20th of February 2023 with my friends Wilmien Luus-Powell and Willem Smit. Bakone Malapa, or the Northern Sotho Museum, is a museum protecting and showcasing a wonderful archaeological site to the south of Polokwane. For several centuries, a community from the Pedi or Northern Sotho lived there. There are lovely hills on which they built a settlement; hills a short distance away from the settlement offer caves and overhangs where women and children could shelter in times of war. Today there are houses in the traditional style at the bottom of the hill, with walls and cattle enclosures as they were back in the day; there are also samples of baskets, pottery and implements they used, and employees give daily demonstrations of the skills used by the old-time folks in order to live off the land.
The report from my previous visit mentions that it was very dry and hardly any plants were in leaf or in flower. This time it was very different! We have experienced ample rains – some places in the country even experienced floods. Liesl Stegmann, the curator, told me she was heartily sick of all the rain, and warned us to not get stuck up on the hill when the thunder started, since the great rocks are prone to getting direct lightning hits! Fortunately the weather on our trip was fair with just light clouds. But thanks to the rain, the plants were all in exuberant, lush growth. We found several species in flower, which helped amazingly in our mission to catalogue the plant species of the museum and the reserve.
Just to give you the idea of the place. I'm not a geologist, but I am fairly sure the hills are mostly granite; just across the road, in the Polokwane Nature Reserve, the hills are mainly quartz. As a consequence, there are many plants that grow in Bakone Malapa that don't grow in the nature reserve just across the road, and vice versa. This demonstrates how in conservation we need to consider the distinctiveness of 'places' and the unique ecosystems they host. The vegetation type of Bakone Malapa can roughly be called 'savannah', but there are actually two distinct types: the first is 'proper' savannah, which exists on the plains around the hills. This proper savannah consists of a large expanse of grass – plus an enormous number of other small plant species growing amidst the grass – dotted with small and fairly widely-spaced trees, mainly thorn trees of the genera Vachellia andSenegalia. On the hill, the make-up of the vegetation changes completely. There are still strongly-growing grasses, but there are many more species of soft herbs and shrubs, climbers, and the trees are mainly broad-leaved species such as Wild Pear, Dombeya rotundifolia, Jacket Plum, Pappea capensis, Velvet Bushwillow, Combretum molle and several others. These grow in the protection of the huge rocks and boulders, where they are safeguarded from fires, and in the crevices of which water collects. Because of such factors, hill vegetation often looks more lush and verdant than that of the surrounding plains.
We climbed all the way to the top of the reserve's main hill, featuring enormous rocks. Right at the top, we surprised a large colony of Rock Hyraxes including many cute babies, scattering in all directions and diving into crevices, sometimes running right in front of our feet!
The work of cataloguing the plants of Bakone Malapa will surely take many years, and I will need to return during different months, since each time we find new things flowering. Also, I can't always identify everything right down to the species, but I am getting confident about at least getting the genus right. So here are photos of a few of the nicer ones we found.
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This creamy yellow flower is a local species of Abutilon. These are members of the Malvaceae or Mallow Family. Polokwane's grassland and savannah are especially rich in species belonging to this family. They are mostly herbs and soft shrubs; a handful of species in South Africa reach tree size. Most flowers of the local species are yellow. The plants can often more easily be identified by the leaves.
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The floriferous Traveller's Joy, Clematis brachiata, is an abundant climbing and scrambling shrub over much of South Africa. The creamy flowers are followed by fluffy seed-heads that persist for many months on the plants, clothing the trees and bushes they climb on in soft, white down. This plant has a great many medicinal uses.
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This delicate blue flower, Commelina benghalensis (photo by Wilmien) is called a Wandering Jew or a Tropical Spiderwort. This little plant is amazingly successful, occurring over vast stretches of Africa and Asia. It is a scrambling plant usually growing at brown level, but sometimes rearing up a foot or so with the support of surrounding vegetation. We have a few species of this family in South Africa, mostly in open grassland and savannah.
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Yet another member of the mallow family is the genus Hibiscus, represented here by an ant-infested flower. Many people grow Hibiscus flowers in their garden; these are mostly bred to be larger and brighter in colour than the wild plants. But wild hibiscus flowers are still very pretty! Again they're mostly yellow, but a few species have pink or even bright red flowers. Hibiscuses are frequently growing on hills and between rocks; in open areas, they will usually grow in the shelter of bushes and trees. One of our largest species grows along the coast, often around lagoons and at the mouths of rivers. Locally, hibiscus flowers are a favourite food for the big, boldly-coloured CMR beetles, who can blast you with a corrosive mix of chemicals from their backsides if you bother them too much.
An inconspicuous flower, that rewards a close look, is that of the Caterpillar Pod, Ormocarpum trichocarpum (photo by Wilmien). This slow-growing, gnarly tree is a member of the Pea Family, the Fabaceae. Its name comes from its pods, which look like hairy, brown caterpillars. The dainty flowers are prettily marked with fine dark, purplish stripes on a lighter background. This species grows on hills but also in the open savannah.
One of the commonest species on the hills is the Jacket Plum, Pappea capensis. This is a very widespread species, and one of our most drought-resistant trees, even growing in the harsh, semi-desert Karoo region. Locally it becomes a spreading tree, often 5 m in height and more than that in width. It has oblong, toughly-textured leaves. The young leaves have spiky margins to deter browsers from feeding on them, but as the trees mature and have gained enough height to put the majority of the leaves beyond the reach of most herbivores, the margins become smooth. These trees bear abundant red, juicy fruits in good years – but some years may not bear fruit at all. They're edible, and very popular with birds. They can be made into a jelly or even an alcoholic drink. Various parts of the tree have numerous medicinal uses.
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Pellaea calomelanos is not a flowering plant, but a fern. It is one of our hardiest local species, capable of surviving in dry, sunny spots where other ferns would shrivel up and perish. The milky-green colour of the leaves is due to a waxy outer layer that protects them against the harsh sun and against desiccation. This fern is mostly found in the shelter of rocks.
Pentarrhinum insipidum, African Heartvine, of which you see the strange, warty fruit here, is a member of the Milkweed family, Asclepiadaceae. This is an immensely diverse and abundant family in South Africa, including some of our most amazing flowers. The present species is not very impressive floristically – but the flowers still merit a close look. But the warty fruits are more obvious and can get quite big, up to about 13 cm/5" in length. This kind of fruit is called a follicle. It splits open along a seam that lies just on the one side. Most Asclepiads make two, opposed follicles per fruit, but in this species, typically only one follicle matures, the other aborts. The fruit split open to release dozens of small, flat seeds, each with a downy white tuft that catches the wind so the seed gets blown away far from the mother plant. This is a vigorous climber often seen in clumps of bushes or thicket in savannah. The leaves can be cooked as a vegetable, and the young fruits can be pickled and eaten like gherkins, and are apparently tasty before they mature and become tough and dry. The African Monarch Butterfly's caterpillars enjoy eating the leaves of these and other Asclepiads.
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The two opposite flowers you see here, belong to a member of the genus Solanum, of the Nightshade family (photo by Wilmien). Solanum is a very large genus of plants and includes the well-known potato, tomato and eggplant/aubergine. It includes many others, several being indigenous to South Africa. Most are weedy, with one reaching tree size. These are less than 1m tall, and bear poisonous yellow fruits.
The final photo shows a species of Tephrosia (photo by Wilmien). This is another member of the Pea family, the Fabaceae. It is a small but vigorous shrub, reaching about 1 m in height. The leaves are soft, the magenta flowers small but pretty. The pods you see here are covered in short, dense hairs. This and other legumes are very important ecologically, since they fix the rather inert nitrogen from the air into compounds that plants and animals can more easily absorb. They do this through bacteria that live in association with their roots. Legumes occur in huge diversity in South Africa, ranging from tiny herbs to some of our largest trees.
There you have it, just a tiny slice of the botanic diversity of this little museum and its reserve.
