Morning All. Today we are back with the Erica series, as we are so crazy about them. They just buck the belief that fynbos is boring, don’t they. Their bright colors, tubes and applications destroying convention. Here is a quick recap on the Erica family:

Erica (practically meaningless; probably not from ereiko, to break, as commonly stated). Ericaceae. Heath. This is the genus that the gardener usually means by “heath.” The heath or heather of English literature and history belongs to the closely allied genus Calluna. The next most important group of cultivated “heaths is Epacris, which, however, belongs to a different family.

Ericas are perennial woody plants from 6 in. to 12 ft. or more, usually much branched: lvs. in whorls of 3-6. very rarely flat, usually 3-sided and with revolute margins that are sometimes connate with the under side: infl. usually terminal or sometimes axillary, very seldom actually, though often apparently, racemose; calyx free, 4- parted; corolla hypogynous, white, rosy or sometimes yellow, usually early deciduous, variously shaped, the commonest forms (in cult.) being bell- shaped, tubular and ventricose, usually 4-lobed; stamens 8; ovary sessile or rarely stalked, 4-celled, rarely 8-celled, with 2-∞ ovules in each cell: fr. a 4-valved caps., with minute seeds.— About 500 species, mostly from South Africa.

Great. Today we are talking about the Versicolor. Another beauty, isn’t she just.

Erica versicolor is a strong, robust shrub – growing up to 2.5m tall with a spread of 2m.

The tubular body of the flower is red with green to whitish coloring towards the tips. Versicolor flowers all year around and enjoys a position of full sun.

This is a strong grower, suitable for difficult gardens and is also lovely as a cut flower.

Today, we are going to move away from the whole scientific angle, and going to expand on the Fynbos Friday concept a little, hopefully to spark a little something. I could go on about the Erica Versicolor for days here, but today I want to see if I can inspire you to take fynbos out of the “bush” and into your homes, your gardens, and into your lives.

Fynbos is not boring. Look a the Versicolor. It flowers all year, it stands quite high and would be an amazing addition to any garden. It’s tough and will make an amazing array when you grow it in its natural state, which you can see an image of here.

A full growing guide can be found here so really there is little excuse not to have at least one of the Erica family in your home. As something you should be truly proud of as a South African (considering 90 percent of the worlds Erica’s are from South Africa) its a fantastic way to show your “Ayobaness” this year.

With our Football World Cup just a few months away now, let’s show the world something that is truly South African.

I feel so inspired I am off to the nursery this morning. Being the web guy, I do not have the advantage of living on the farm, instead I have to grow my own, like you.

More beautiful images here for those who are now inspired as well.

For those of you who know a little more about wine than how to open the bottle and quaff away, you will know that its heading towards harvest time with serious vooma now.

To keep you in the loop (and educate the rest of us) I sat down with our wine maker, Nikey, to see what he has been doing out in the vineyards in the last few weeks. In typical format, he gave me a short, concise list which I will do my best to expand on.

With around 2-3 weeks to go until we start harvesting on Haut Espoir, the staff and Nikey have been busy, over the last few weeks with (in no particular order):

Green Bunch Removal – this helps the bunches which are nearing harvest to get that extra little bit of nutrients, ensuring only the best fruit comes from the vine into the barrel or tank. Green bunches steal those nutrients, as there is only so much to go around and it gets divided quite equally.

Tipping and Lifting Vines – the vines tend to have a mind of their own, and would like to grow in all directions, even knocking the entire wire system out at times, so we have to guide them into the right paths and formats, lifting them back into the wire formats.

Side Shoot Removal – side shoots are much like green bunches, and are removed to make sure all the nutrients head for the bunches, and not into growing beautiful leaves. Leaves do not make great wines, so we trim the vines to make sure the maximum nutrients get to the bunches.

Those are just 3 things we have been doing here in the last few weeks. Nikey was off into the vines again and I managed to catch him for some information on the Juicing and Pressing procedures the following day, so look out for that post soon.

The Protea Repens is a true sugarbush and this sturdy, dense shrub produces fairly large flowers ranging in colour from cream to deep red either during summer or during winter, depending on the variant grown. It is an excellent addition to any “wild-life” garden as the large amount of nectar produced by the flowers attracts birds, bees and other insects. The plants are tolerant to a large variety of growing conditions but will show frost damage at temperatures below -4 degrees Celsius.

The amazing variety in plant size, habit, flower size and colour of the genus Protea was the reason it was named after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his shape at will. The species name of ‘repens’, meaning ‘creeping’ is misleading as Protea repens is an upright, much branched shrub, which normally grows to a height of 2.5 metres but can reach a height of 4.5 m.

The Sugarbush was one of the first proteas described by Carl Linnaeus (in 1753), who originally called it Leucadendron repens. Alas, he based his description on Boerhaave’s confusing illustrations, and retained the name for what is now Protea repens: the “creeping” protea (from the Latin repere “to creep”, hence repent). Thus Carl Thunberg’s later, more appropriate, name, Protea mellifera, the “honey-bearing” protea, which was used for almost 200 years, is incorrect. However, both names are better than Pr scolopendriifolia, which is the name we would have had to be using now, had Linneaus not made his mistake and mixed up Boerhaave’s plates..

So how, looking at the size, color and height variance, do we know that it’s Protea Repens? The shape of the flowers is very distinctive, chalice-shaped, and forms an inverted, brown “ice-cream cone” seedhead.

For 200 years Protea repens was South Africa’s national flower. It was not officially proclaimed – it had just grown to that status. On 19 February 1976 Protea cynaroides was proclaimed the official national flower of South Africa. The Sugarbush was usurped from its rightful role, gained through popularity, utility and appeal, by a plant with a bigger flower head.

Few other plants are as well ingrained in our history as is Protea repens. In the words of Fred Michel, a Cape Town dance-band leader, who while picnicking amid Sugarbushes on Lion’s Head composed the now world famous song: “Suikerbossie ek wil jou he” (Sugarbush, I want you!).

About a week ago we came across The Lunch Runner, just a normal guy, who has taken it upon himself to take requests and take you for a run outside, by having you select points along the route or items to photograph.

Catch his adventures by following him on twitter here. Rob got onto the band wagon and asked him to find a bottle of Haut Espoir wine, somewhere and in return, a case of it would be his.

After finding a bottle of Gentle Giant 2006 at Caveau in Bree Street, the case was his.

What started as a simple conversation lead to your editor going on what was supposed to be a 4km run today, with the Lunch Runner, to deliver his case of Gentle Giant. It turned into a great adventure with us going 3 hours, talking wine for quite a lot of the way. An avid fan, he was totally unawares that our cases contained 12 bottles in stead of 6, and nearly fell off a mountain ledge when the information was shared. You can follow the run we did in some pictures here. The only thing lacking from the adventure was a bottle (or two) of 2008 Shiraz Rose chilled on ice at the Cable Car Station.

The Haut Espoir team really love the concept of Your Lunch Run, as we are often stuck in the office over lunch, when we really wish to be outside. The fact that we could get involved in any sort of way in such an amazing concept is fantastic for us, never mind that we actually got to go running with the man.

His identity remains a secret, his mission is to grow his concept, and inspire people all over the world.

Support him, interact with him, and who knows, maybe you could be next to win a case of Haut Espoir Wines.

The Blushing Bride is part of our local folklore: few plant species can have had as much conflicting information written about them. One thing is certain, however! Botanically Serruria florida was officially discovered by Carl Thunberg in the Franschoek Mountains in 1773. It then disappeared from the scientific annals for over 100 years. From then on authorities differ in their accounts. However, it appears to have been generally accepted by botanists of the day that it was extinct.

According to Conrad Leighton (Cape Floral Kingdom, 1960, Juta), the Blushing Bride was rediscovered at the French Hoek flower show in 1914, by Professor Harold Pearson (then director of the one-year old Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens), in the company of Dr Rudolf Marloth and Rt Hon. G. Brand van Zyl, who collected a few seeds from which “all the thousands of plants grown at Kirstenbosch subsequently, distributed as seed to members of the Botanical Society and the horticultural trade, and now grown commercially in South Africa and introduced to other countries” are derived.

So today’s fynbos specimen is a bit of a comeback story. Whilst this is a theme for 2010 in general, and very much a part of the lives of everyone at the farm (the dam being rebuilt, personal goals and other up and coming exciting events all around comebacks at Haut Espoir in 2010), I personally loved this story, and it made my week.

When Rob commissioned me to write this post, I was immediately intrigued by the name, Blushing Bride. There had to be a story behind it, and as a storyteller by nature, I went digging to find out what was going on here. It was way better than I thought.

Historically it is reputed that French Hugenots farmers would approach their girlfriends with a S. florida flower in their lapels when about to ask for their hand in marriage. The common name, Blushing Bride, apart from the obvious inference of the flowers colour, derives from the fact that the suitor’s intention was apparent to all who met him, much to the embarrassment of his bride to be. The deeper the pink colour the more serious the intentions of the suitor.

How romantic. I guess the idea that to wait for the flower to reach it’s most pink can draw comparisons to love, and how sometimes, it comes best to those who are willing to offer patience.

There was an interesting article placed here on the Botanical Society’s web presence where 30 avid FB’ers (Fynbossers, not Facebookers) took a beautiful walk to observe this fine species, which draws mystical appreciation for its comeback from the dead.

I personally have two thank you mentions to get out today with this particular species, the one has to go to Glenwood Wines, who took special care to restore their fynbos with a plethora of Blushing Brides, and then a special thank you to Fiona Powrie of Dragon Plants who is the angel who helped us do our species lists and helped plant out the fynbos section on Haut Espoir. She is our personal guru in Fynbos.

Before the article gets out of hand in length, I wanted to put one more link out there which I found, to show you how beautiful this plant gets. The page is called Skirted Spiderheads, and you can find it here. Please enjoy.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Sources:

1, 2 & 3

As the farm grows from strength to strength, so does our online presence, which means more places you can find Haut Espoir online, in articles and with other suppliers.

To give you a short taster, here is are a few places you may not have thought to find us, but yet, here we are;

Here you will find our Flickr page, which Robupdates on a regular basis. Always nice pictures, always fresh content, sometimes random.

SA Wines has some information on the farm, and with what looks like an early picture of Rob on it.

Haut Espoir are super passionate about wildlife, and the Endangered Wildlife Trust is a cause close to our hearts, and something we support wholeheartedly. Check out their cause, and get involved!

Lacotte in the Franschoek valley is an amazing place to go shop, and they stock all our wines. If you are in the area, but can’t make it up to the farm, make sure you stop there.

That’s really it for today, see you tomorrow for Fynbos Friday.

So it is no secret I am a big fan of the following plant family, Erica’s, and this week is a really rare flower we are focusing on.

First, I think it is best to let you all know how special the genus Erica is…this from Dolf Schumann and Gerhard Kirsten, from their amazing book, Ericas of South Africa:

For sheer diversity the genus Erica is the most outstanding of all the many genera that make up the fynbos biome in the south-western and southern corner of South Africa.  It numbers some 650 species, many of which are quite exquisite in the shape, colouring and delicacy of their flowers. Some are very rare, and others are on the point of extinction.

And some stats for you:

Outside of this country- only 76 species occur naturally.   South Africa has well over 650!

Onto the specific Erica of this week.  The Erica lerouxiae.

This plant is named after Miss E. le Roux, who brought the species to the attention of Harry Bolus in 1887.

This very pretty species seems to be confined to the western part of the Franschhoek valley where, at altitudes between 400 and 700 m above sea level, it grows on steep slopes in or near streams. It flowers in August and September.
To put that into perspective, here are the spots where Marc from next door says they are on Boekenhoutskloof, and where I have found plants on the mountain..

Discovered on Boekenhoutskloof, and endemic to Scherpheuwelberg, which is the mountain behind both properties, it occurs naturally nowhere else.   That is quite a scary prospect realizing that we are the custodians of a species which; if we bugger it up, doesn’t exist anymore.   Constant source of inspiration for us to get up into the berge and chop out all that alien muck on a regular basis.    Which makes this following shot from the fire two years ago even more scary…. 

I remember when I first moved into the valley permanently, and I really struggled to find this particular Erica up in the mountain.  Now it seems to be doing very well as a species, the indicator I use is that whenever I am out on a Fynbos Walk, these days, I seem to find a new plant.  It is high time I did some proper recording and dating of said individuals….

On a sadder note, with the recent injury to Dr Paul Cluver, and all the damage to fynbos the Overberg has experienced from their recent fire, here is an exert from Pendock Uncorked:   ‘Some species which were thought to be extinct have only recently been rediscovered in our mountain fynbos – in particular the Erica patens. We hope we have not lost this rare flora’, said Paul Clüver IV.”

It fills me with such pride to be part of an industry so committed to the preservation of the countries Fynbos.  If you want to make a difference, please download the BWI wine list here.

And finally, a smattering of poetry, this is from the opening of the book that got me hooked onto this amazing little fynbos wonder:

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower- but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is

The voice and the Peak

Alfred Lord Tennyson

So it is no secret.  I love buchu dearly.  I live on it, munch fresh handfuls daily, drink the tea, make buchu brandy, cook with it, make vinegars for salad dressings out of it.

Some people refer to me as the Buchu Koning.   We even have a little culinary thing going with Annemarie, the culinary concierge from LQF on buchu and fynbos, here.

For my bachelors we took a bottle up to the Cederberg as a helper for the hideous morning after, and you know what?  We klapped it all on the way up there. And we never felt better.  If I am ever feeling the effects of too much overindulgence, as I am sure I am feeling this morning, as you probably are, then look no further than this amazing medicinal wonder plant.   That’s enough for now. We all have hangovers to attend to…Happy New Year and hoorah 2010.  Bring it!