Phylica ericoides grown big

This large, spreading Phylica ericoides bush flowers on a hill north of Caledon during February. The many-flowered heads grow in compact white clusters at most stem-tips, close together, and at similar heights, forming the rounded shrub structure with open spaces among the bigger branches.

Always handy to have a rock nearby for accessing water stored under it when the summer gets dry. Also useful for sometimes saving the single-stemmed plant that is normally killed by fynbos fires. The enormous number of florets covering the bush gives an idea of the huge seed set of these plants in good years. This is the provision of a reseeder species, a single stem type plant, for not being able to resprout from an underground stump and survive fire.

Once dry, the fruit capsules split to release their seeds, some of which will be eaten (and maybe dispersed further), others will die and turn to food for roots, while the rest will germinate and repeat the achievement of becoming a bush, even as big as this. 

The pine? Should not be there, but exotics continually creep in from seeding themselves in the fynbos these days. All the living will migrate within their capacity to favourable terrain, given the chance. The Phylica bush has no quarrel with the single pine tree that may even provide some shield against the elements and is not stealing too much sun, water and nutrients at the time of the photo. An eventual pine forest that may ensue here would be another matter. It may infest, squeezing out the phylicas and other indigenous plants from their home. So, get rid of it when it appears on your land (Manning, 2007; Bean and Johns, 2005; iNaturalist; https://pza.sanbi.org).