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Second in our survey of strange places where some of the strangest succulent plants live, is a county-sized stretch of apparent desolation known as the Richtersveld. Technically, it’s part of Namaqualand, the northernmost tip of that most northwestern strip of South Africa, it, but it has such a distinct and astoundingly rich flora of that it deserves recognition as a unique environment (or collection of unique environments) all its own.
ImageIn a way, the Richtersveld might be said to encapsulate the entirety of Namaqualand in miniature. It has its quartzfields, it has its fog-haunted beachscapes, it has its little mountain ranges made both of jagged, eroded peaks and more dome-like koppies, and it may have as many as 1600 endemic species all contained within a few thousand square miles.
Approximately rectangular in shape, the Richtersveld borders the Atlantic Ocean at its western edge, the Orange River at the north and part of the east boundaries, and less prominently geographical indicators for its remaining sides, the road between Steinkopf and Port Nolloth in the south (road R382 if case you really want to know), and the main road ((N7) on the east to the Namibian border at Vioolsdrif. The Orange River makes a sharp northern turn fifteen or so miles west of Vioolsdrif, then turns to the southwest and finally to the sea at Alexander Bay. The northeast corner, along the bend of the river, is set aside as the Richtersveld National Park , but the 80 or 90 percent of the region that’s outside the park is no less interesting in terms of flora.
With a few outstanding exceptions, Richtersveld succulents tend to be small. Almost all the families of South African succulents are found there, sometimes in startling numbers and diversity. Perhaps the most species rich part lies near the southern edge, two thirds of the way toward the coast. There, a few small hills manage to catch enough fog on their slopes and kloofs (gorges) to support a fairly dense plant cover. Unlike the Knersvlakte quartzfields, these hills don’t immediately seem like some surrealist landscape, they just look like hills dotted with greenery (at least, in the winter “rainy” season), and it’s not until you get the chance for an up-close look that it becomes apparent that almost every plant in the surroundings is a succulent, Tylecodon, Crassula, Adromischus, Orbea, Quaqua, Duvalia, Anacampseros, Avonia, Euphorbia, Gasteria, Haworthia, Meyerophytum, Mitrophyllum, an endless variety of Conophytym species, Cheridopsis, bizarre bulbs such as Whiteheadia bifolia, on and on, with a significant proportion of these plants not just Richtersveld endemics, but endemic to just these hills, sometimes, to a single kloof no more than forty or fifty feet wide. Imagine if the slopes around Twin Peaks in San Francisco had hundred of different species of plants occurring on them, and that dozens of these species were endemics, found nowhere else on Earth but on these hills, and you’ll have some idea of the density and variety of the plant life in this tiny section, as reasonably measured in acres as in square miles. We spent the better part of a day climbing around one of these hills, with klipspringers (miniature antelopes specializing in cliff face habitats) bounding around us while we ate lunch, and we could easily have explored for several days more, all in an area that would be completely dwarfed even by an unimpressive peak such as Mt. Tamalpais.
A few miles either to the east or the west and the landscape changes again, as does the succulent flora. East of the moisture trapping hills, the countryside is one of plated rocks, heaped up into low koppies, or laid flat in broken plains. In either case, there’s relatively little exposed soil, limited mostly to interstices between the rocks, and that’s where the succulent vegetation manages to put down roots and grow. The density of plant life is less, but the diversity of species is almost as great, with strange mesembs (Cheiridopsis peculiaris being an appropriately named example), succulent pelargoniums, some with almost cube-shaped stems blasted by the wind, others lower growing with explosions of brilliant cerise flowers at bloom time (P. sericifolia), and number of very rare, very localized small medusoid euphorbias (such as E. pentops), miniature pachycaul composites such as Othonna, numerous bulbs, and, once more, an endless series of conophytums, with as many as ten species occurring on a typical koppie, perhaps the size of a suburban grocery store parking lot.
To the west, as the influence of the ocean air increases, the land changes again, until the odd beachscapes of the Richtersveld come into view. Even more than in the Namaqualand sandveld, the coastal Richtersveld is floristically distinct. The soil—variously soft and sandy or composed of hard-packed grit—often within sight of the sea, is dotted with the window-leaved mesembs, Fenestraria rhopalophylla (better known as Baby Toes), the geometrically stacked blue-white columns of Crassula plegmatoides, and large, mound-forming plants of Euphorbia ramiglans, a medusoid plant with a sunken central stem and innumerable, short, tubercled branches, that surround the central head like little snakes. Where the sand is harder and the ground less accommodating, E. ramiglans becomes much smaller, accompanied by a couple of species of rare, dwarf euphorbias that look like strings of tiny sausages (E. herrei and E. stapeliodes) odd mesembs that resemble inch and a half high clumps of bamboo, more weather-blasted pelargoniums, bulbines with rounded, thick leaves that look more like a Mexican Pachyphytum than a bulb, and even a lithops species (L. herrei). The rocky outcroppings of this coastal area provide a habitat for many extremely rare succulents, several monsonias (formerly called Sarcocaulon), extraordinarily modified members of the Geraniaceae, miniature othonnas with perfectly spherical leaves, tiny conophytums surviving on a scant handful of grit on otherwise bare rocks, the totally phony-looking trichocaulons (I can’t stand to call them Larryleachia, currently their mostly accepted new name), with tiny star shaped flowers that reveal them as milkweeds, angular clumps of the sky-blue mesemb Dracophilus, all growing out of as close to nothing as you can imagine. The rocks themselves, odd carbonates with crazy-swirling shaped sand-blasted by local winds, in some place remain out of reach, behind the fences and patrols of the “forbidden” diamond areas.
Inland in this central part of the Richtersveld brings you to quartzfields filled with lithops and conophytums, avonias (the white worm plant), miniature othonnas and tylecodons, while regions of deeper soil support a few non-succulent bushes where asclepiads such as Tromotriche extend their spectacularly ornate starfish flowers on pedicles that reach beyond the shade providing bushes which shelter the plants themselves. These flats also support more species of extremely rare medusoid euphorbias.
Farther to the north on the tops and sides of isolated hills, one of the few giant plants of the Richtersveld makes it appearance. This is Aloe pillansii, one of the rarest of aloes, with an immensely swollen base up to five or six feet across, that tapers rapidly into an upright trunk, which finally, twenty feet above the ground, divides into a few branches. This aloe is highly endangered, but it shares its northern Richtersveld neighborhood with several other species of aloe, among them the odd, also rare, clumping A. pearsonii, with upright stems and dense rosettes of short, stiff leaves, often bright red in habitat. Aloe karasbergenis (now considered a subspecies of the very common A. striata) is another Richtersveld species, with milky-white leaves patterned with longitudinal blue lines. It extends north of the Orange River into Namibia, as does A. gariepina (named after the indigenous name of the Orange River—the Gariep), as also does the famous “halfman,” Pachypodium namaquanum, a bit taller than a person, usually single-stemmed, and bent toward the northern sun. A. pillansii, the pachypodium, along with less spectacular species such as Crassula sladeniana and Euphorbia hamata seek these hills for habitat; the others may grow on the flats as well.
The overall effect of these larger plants in their barren-seeming environment, where they may grow among scattered quartzite boulders that look like dinosaur teeth poking out of the ground, is almost one of non-reality. The bulbous-based aloes and hulking, spiny, stooped halfmen look more like cartoons than plants (I sometimes call them Dr. Seuss plants), the landscape has the classic “moonscape” look of various intense desert areas, the temperature can shift from cool and overcast to absolutely burning hot within a few minutes when the wind blows the fog away. Even the few insects are bizarre, highly armored weevils and crickets, or “toad grasshoppers,” wingless, squat, with camouflage patterns complete down to individual grains of sand. All over the Richtersveld there isn’t much evidence of animal life, few birds, the occasional puff adder (and their mostly underground prey, mole rats and golden moles), not much else, at least during the daytime. In the low mountains there are a few small antelope species, extremely rare mountain zebras, and, as scarce, the very occasional leopard (reported to me from his own trip by Russell Wagner). There’s really more than that, of course; several species of rodents, small carnivores, rabbits, snakes and lizards, along with scorpions and various poisonous spiders, and we saw a dead African wildcat along a dirt road north of the tiny, mostly abandoned settlement of Lekkersing. All in all, though, to a passerby the Richtersveld, more than most deserts, seems strangely devoid of animal life, except for crazy-making flies during a wet year.
The contrast between the northern Richtersveld with the fog-trapping hills, maybe forty or fifty miles to the south, seems complete, even to most of the species of plants. The high degree of endemism and species diversity among Richtersveld plants may be unique in the world. Even though it does not have the immediate feel of unearthliness to the degree of some of the places I’m going to be discussing, there literally is no place like it in the world.
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