Enjoy our beautiful flowers – Part 1

AT LONG last many regions of Namibia have received good rains bringing forth a multitude of flowers and grasses. In this and one or two subsequent articles a number of flowers that are easy to recognise will be presented.

To begin with, some fairly high flowering plants are easy to identify even without pictures. There are the Sesamum species which are bearing blue, pale purple to pink trumpet-shaped flowers on a single stalk of up to two metres.

More than 10 different species occur in Namibia and they can often only be distinguished by the shape of their seeds and other equally unobtrusive properties.

The so-called rock dagga (Leonotis schinzii) also reaches a height of up to two metres and can easily be recognised by its orange flowers carried in ball-shaped dense clusters spaced evenly along the length of the angular stalk.

The flowers contain much nectar, popular with insects, butterflies and children. Several species of this plant have been smoked by indigenous people – hence the name wild dagga, dagga being the local name for cannabis sativa or marijuana.

However it has been scientifically established that these plants do not contain any narcotic substances. There is a similarly shaped but much smaller plant with ball-shaped clusters of white flowers, known as bobble plant or tumbleweed (Acrotome inflata).

Another similarly shaped but more weedy species of this kind also with white flowers (Acrotome fleckii) occurs only in Namibia, mainly in the western parts of the southern and central Namib.

Another flowering plant of up to two metres often found along the eastern reaches of the Namib is Rogeria spp. after Thomas Roger. This plant is conspicuous by its large intensely dark green leaves – unusual for plants in arid surroundings – but also by its strong stems, which may survive several seasons. Rogeria has large white or pink flowers with a dark centre.

At least 15 species of cleome [photo of yellow flower] occur in Namibia and are often found on road verges where they are conspicuous by their flower stalks, reaching a height of up to 1,2 m and by being sticky and smelly when touched.

The flowers are delicately shaped and yellow marked with purple or purple marked with yellow. Young seedlings of the white flowering cat’s whiskers (Cleome gynandra), often occuring in dense stands on cultivated land, are cooked and eaten as ‘spinach’. They can also be shaped into flat cakes, dried in the sun and stored for later use.

The blue flower on the photo is wild commelina, A. geeleendagsblom (Commelina africana) often found in the shade of other plants. Similarly shaped and also preferring shady places are C. benghalensis, A. blouselblommetjie and C. livingstonii.

Some useful books on Namibia’s flowering plants:

C. Mannheimer: Wild flowers of the Central Highlands of Namibia, ISBN 978-99916-2-558-4, Macmillan Education,

C. Mannheimer, G. Maggs-Kölling, H Kolberg, S Rügheimer: Wildflowers of the Southern Namib, Macmillan Namibia ISBN 978-999 16-0-878-5

Burke, Antje: Wild Flowers of the Southern Namib / Pflanzenführer für die Südliche Namib

Wild Flowers of the Central Namib / Pflanzenführer für die Zentrale Namib

Wild Flowers of the Northern Namib / Pflanzenführer für die Nördliche Namib

Wild Flowers of the Central Highlands ISBN 978-999 16-40-68-6

Roodt, Veronica: Common Wild Flowers of the Okavango Delta, ISBN 99912 0 242 0,

Noël van Rooyen: Flowering Plants of the Kalahari Dunes, ISBN – 620 27376 3

Available from Book Den, corner Hosea Kutako Avenue/Puccini Street and Namibia Book Market in the Hotel Gruener Kranz complex opposite Obeco sanitary supplies.

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