Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden: South Africa’s Hidden Jewel

“Winter flowers” bloom on the eastern slope of the Table Mountain Escarpment, which is home to six different biomes.

Orange-flowering protea are referred to as “sugarbushes” or suikerbos in Afrikaans. The genus Protea was named in 1735 after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will, because they have such a wide variety of forms.

Coneflowers are members of the protea family. There are 83 species in total, all of which only occur in South Africa, between the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

All drinking water at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is extracted from boreholes on the estate which tap into the Table Mountain aquifer at a depth of 60 meters. Because of the water’s mineral content and neutral 7.0 pH, it is eminently suitable for bottling.

Hiking through the Kirstenbosch bushveld in view of the misty Cape Escarpment.

Indigenous purple “sporries”, a type of sunflax native to the Western Cape, are a member of the mustard family, which means they are related to broccoli.

Bright pink Erica.

Mimetes cucullatus, a form of low-growing protea that is also native to South Africa’s fynbos region.

Mandela’s Gold Strelitzia, a special breed of Crane Flowers that Kirstenbosch named after local hero Nelson Mandela, took 20 years of hand pollination to develop. “Mandela’s Gold” began with the cross pollination of seven Yellow-flowering Strelitzias, which are also known as “Bird-of-Paradise” or Crane Flower (because their boat-shaped structure make each flower look like a bird). The plant was introduced to the garden after successful pollination in 1996.

A selection of fynbos (which means “fine bush” in Afrikaans) and buchu (a group of small-leafed, aromatic shrubs found in the fynbos region). A cousin of oranges and lemons, each kind of buchu has its own unique fragrance, which visitors can smell by rubbing their leaves and smelling their fingers afterwards.

Wild gardenia has an eggy, woody shape that takes about 35 years to grow! Gardenia thunbergia (left) are eaten by Elephant, Buffalo, or large antelope like the Kudu, which is a deer-like bushveld dweller whose meat can often be found on South African menus. Because gardenia is related to coffee and quinine, its roots are used to treat skin diseases and gall bladder problems, while its flowers (which bloom in South Africa from January to March) are white and heavily perfumed, with a scent that gets stronger at night.

South Africa’s national flower, King Protea, in full repose. Protea cynaroides is endemic to the Western and Eastern Cape of South Africa and does not grow naturally anywhere else in the world. About the size of a large sunflower or a small dinner plate, King Protea takes about 4 to 5 years to flower for the first time– but when they do, the results are stunning.

Originally described by botanists as a “Tree Artichoke”, the closed King Protea was discovered in the 1700s and strongly resembles the Globe Artichoke cynara scolymus.

Flowering “conebushes”– another member of the protea family– have flower heads that develop into cone-like fruits that protect the seeds from predators and fire, which is a constant threat in the wild bushveld.

Helichrysum argyrophyllum, or “Yellow Everlasting”, is a popular form of ground cover in most South African gardens.

Sour Fig, a fleshy, succulent-like plant, is grown in Kirstenbosch’s medicinal plant garden as a representation of one of several plants that local Khoisan women traditionally used to ensure an easy birth and a strong, healthy baby. The Khoisan tribe is a unifying name for the two tribes of people native to South Africa.

A long, coiling succulent known as Crassula perforata, a concertina plant housed in the Kirstenbosch tropical greenhouse.