Tag: Naturephotochallenge

Nature Photo Challenge: #12 Trees

~ Aletta - nowathome ~ 21 Comments

Denzil Nature: Trees

South Africa is known for its beautiful coastline on the Western Coast, but with this comes quite harsh windy and salt spray conditions for our plants and trees.

The White Milkwood tree is one of your best options for a dense shade or screen or windbreak tree along the coastal areas, because it can withstand quite extreme weather conditions.

Sideroxylon inerme is a Southern African coastal tree, with dense foliage, black berries and small, greenish flowers. The tree’s generic name means “Iron-wood” in Greek, referring to its very hard timber. It is one of South Africa’s “Protected Trees” and several specimens are provincial heritage sites. Wikipedia

File:Sideroxylon inerme - Milkwood - Cape Town 6.JPG

Kirstenbosch gardens with lots of trees
Velddrift


Phoenix canariensis – Canary Date Palm
This classic tropical tree makes a bold statement in any large garden, estate or farm. Often planted along our coastal sidewalks due to its excellent tolerance to strong winds and sea spray. It has become very popular over the years due to its capacity to store water in the trunk of the stem, making it a great waterwise choice in drought-stricken areas. The birds also like to use the foliage for building their nests.
Palm trees
Palm tree on the beach – Saldanha
Palm Trees – Port Owen

Buddleja saligna – False Olive / Witolien 

Fast growing, indigenous and evergreen with stunning flowers? Sign us up for this tree please!

This is a very versatile tree that can be pruned into a beautiful tree shape as well as kept low for hedging purposes. The lovely woven-like bark also adds ornamental value and the beautiful balls of blossoms in summer gives this tree a wow-factor! To top it off, it can do well in windy conditions, coastal conditions and clay soil

Young False Olive trees
Buddleja saligna, the false olive or bastard olive, is almost endemic to South Africa where it has a wide distribution. It occurs most often in ravines and against outcrops, and is distributed from coastal elevations to the central plateau at elevations of < 2000 m.

If you look closely, you will find a sunbird hiding in this tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature Photo Challenge: Duck

~ Aletta - nowathome ~ 15 Comments

Denzil Nature: Duck

Join in this brand new Nature Photo Challenge and post your favourite nature photographs!

Here are the guidelines from Denzil:

  • I will introduce a new theme every Wednesday. This gives you time to plan a little weekend trip to take some new photos, or dig into your archives. For each theme I will share some photos of my own that may give you some inspiration.
  • The themes will be extremely varied. Just to whet your appetite, potential themes could be: Busy Bees, Red Leaves, White Blossom, Feathers, Butterflies, Unusual Textures, Bark, Creepie-Crawlies, Nuts & Seeds, Swans … nature is infinite, as is this challenge!
  • You can submit one photo or more per theme.
  • You can use new or archived photos.
  • You will need to follow Denzil Nature so you can receive notifications of when I launch a new Nature Photo Challenge theme.
  • When you see a theme that interests you, publish your post with your nature photo(s) on your blog. Entitle the post “Nature Photo Challenge: theme”
  • Add the tag Naturephotochallenge to the post
  • Leave a comment and the link to your post on his post that introduced that theme so that he can visit your blog.