Disa chrysostachya

Orchid flowers of many shapes, sizes and colours are among the herbs that call the grassland home. Several of them are endemic to parts of the Highveld, especially the diverse eastern escarpment. More westerly grasslands in South Africa have fewer plant species on the average piece of land, tending less towards bulbs and herbs, more to succulents and shrublets among the grasses.

Disa chrysostachya is but one orchid that presents brightly contrasting flower colour on the green Drakensberg grassland slopes during the hot and rainy summer months. These plants favour damp seeps and gulleys.

Grassland harbours many more herbaceous flowering plant species than actual grass species, although the grassy plants predominate in number. Limited representation of many other kinds of vegetation is, of course, also found in flourishing grassland. These might include the occasional tree, some ferns and mosses among rocks where it gets damp, succulents and more.

Once a piece of South African type grassland is ruined, we can’t get it back! Forests re-establish fairly easily, but not species diverse grassland. Once ploughed, grassland will display poor indigenous plant diversity even a century later (Braam van Wyk, Geasphere Conference, Nov 2006; Manning, 2009; www.plantzafrica.com).