Now don't laugh, but I've always felt that it was somehow going against nature to transplant a human being overnight from a winter climate to a summer climate. Surely the anatomical clock, unprepared for the sudden increase in daylight and heat, would go haywire, and the body would go berserk? But now, not long home from a trip to sunny South Africa, I can happily dismiss those notions of the sadly unseasoned traveller. In fact, nothing could be more magical than being transported to the middle of summer while your own country slumbers in sodden winter. And for the plantlover whose refuge from the chilly Irish garden is to dream over glossy gardening books, there is a special thrill. Being instantly plumped down among the flowers of a South African summer gives you the feeling that you are right inside the pages of the plant book that you just set down the day before.
Our first image of a December Cape Town was stitched around with fringes of Agapanthus africanus in full bloom. Thousands of the metre-high blue and white drumsticks lined the airport roads and hemmed in the highways. This big, stately bulb does well in most Irish gardens, increasing into structural evergreen clumps, beloved by snails who shelter in its depths - but never nibble it. Agapanthus africanus, incidentally, was the second plant to reach Europe from South Africa, in 1629. (The first was Moraeailiata, in 1587.)
The agapanthus was an old friend among scores of aliens, and it took a while before we met another plant that we readily identified. Many of the road medians, for instance, were filled with a sturdy-looking, succulent-leaved individual with five-petalled pink or white flowers. It was so widespread and so utterly steadfast in the breeze of the whizzing traffic, that we felt it must be something we just couldn't remember the name of. A guide at Cape Town's wonderful Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens named it as Orphium frutescens, a South African plant of sandy places. It is unknown in Ireland, although I'm sure it would thrive in our warmer gardens or in a conservatory. Other roadside flowers planted by the enlightened highway department included further native species such as the blue-spired Aristea and the towering yellow Wachendorfia.
To properly see the wealth of South Africa's Cape Floral Kingdom (the smallest of the world's six floral regions, covering a mere 0.04 per cent of the earth's surface), you have to get off your bum and ramble over the Cape Peninsula National Park, Table Mountain or one of the many nature reserves that are close to Cape Town. There are about 8,600 plant species in the Cape Floral Kingdom (an area of 90,000 square kilometres stretching around the southwestern tip of Africa) and 5,800 of these species are endemic.
Most of the plants are known as "fynbos" - from the Dutch "fijn bosch", meaning fine bush - and have evergreen, small, fine leaves (like the ericas or heaths) or larger, leathery leaves (like the 322 protea species). They are well-adapted for the stony, nutrient-poor soil and dry conditions that pervade this part of the African continent. And most - at least to these Irish eyes - fell lamentably into the "unidentified growing object" category. But, with over 600 heathers to choose from (there are less than 30 in the rest of the world) and 1,000 daisies, 600 legumes, about 1,000 bulbs and corms, and several thousand other species, it's hard to know where to start.
So, we started with what we knew: plants that we had already encountered in Irish gardens. Unfortunately the flocks of white arum lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) were just at the end of their flowering, but not so the watsonias, which were in full flight. Their numbers confused and delighted us: we were used to seeing them in small, proud patches in discerning gardens, but here scores of pink and orange spires covered the hillsides. The bulbs were, at one time, an important food source. Watsonia is one of those peculiar plants that loves a fire, and regenerates eagerly after one. We saw ixias, moraeas and orchids (including a lone specimen of the elusive red Disa uniflora) phygelius, lobelia and all manner of daisies: gazanias, mesembryanthemums, felicias, osteospermums - the forebears of our garden varieties. The everlasting flowers of the helichrysums were a flower-arranger's delight (particularly the bold, shimmering Syncarpha vestita), but of course you were not allowed to pick. There were plants that we can grow here only in conservatories: aloes, sky-blue plumbago, the succulent Cotyledon orbiculata and cactus-like euphorbias.
And then there were the pelargoniums - or tender geraniums - growing willy-nilly out of the stony roadsides and hill-slopes. As big as sofas, they cocked a hearty snook at our little potted plants and window boxes of summer colour. We were surprised to learn that there are no grasses on the great hulk of Table Mountain. Instead there are restios. Restio subverticillatus (a plant which never really "spoke" to me) is a prized garden plant along the south coast of Ireland, and lone specimens of it sit importantly in the best Cork gardens. In South Africa, restios are used for thatching.
We smiled too, when we saw Melianthus major, that poshest of architectural plants (and a must-have for any Irish garden worth its salt) growing in ditches by the side of the road.
But the plant that gave me the most pleasure of all was a lone, low thing, less than six inches tall and with strange scarlet tubes. It was Harveya squamosa, a rare plant named after W.H. Harvey, an Irish botanist who during the last century was one of the major forces in cataloguing the magnificent and diverse flora of South Africa's Cape Kingdom.