ants_in_her_eyes's Favorites

Out of thousands of camera trap images, this was the single spotted hyaena photo taken by me in Ghanzi District.

In my experience, there were few spotteds in the Ghanzi farm area. I had a secondhand report of a sighting in the Okwa (a hundred kilometers + to the south) and we found a jaw that I suspect was a spotted, but very few farmers reported spotted hyaenas on their farms. Could be marginal habitat, but this species is also relatively easy to locally eradicate.

Starbush

Ant-dependent fynbos plants 15b
Many of these plants are entirely dependent upon myrmecochory [= distribution of their fruits by ants] for fire survival in fynbos.
This lovely little conebush is known to the locals as ‘sterrebos’ [star bush], a truly lovely name for a plant with silvery yellow, star-shaped inflorescences that mimic the shining lights in the huge, star-filled skies of the Cederberg. These come from the Sterrebosbank, the slopes of the huge shale band that encircles Sneeuberg, highest peak in the Cederberg: a magnificent setting for a magnificent plant that is very sadly demoted to ‘Bokkeveld Conebush’ in The Book. It’s very best locality isn’t even in the Bokkeveld. Surely local common names are the most valid ones that there are! The female with its small involucral leaves and pink inflorescence is typical of the sprawling form that occurs on the high, snow-slopes of these mountains. The males, from the same area, are more conventional in form.
Not a resprouter after fire: 100% ant depend-ant. The only ants we could find up there were Anoplolepis steingroeveri.
See www.ants.org.za for more info

Impatiens glandulifera (Plant, Balsaminaceae), New Zealand: Naturalised

pink flower

This species is a bad weed in Britain, and may well be on the way to being the same in New Zealand, where it is at an earlier stage in its invasion.

Specimen collected as JJS-070417-1

track along Dog Stream
Parallel with Scarborough Street
Hanmer Springs
Canterbury
New Zealand