Euphorbia species

It is extraordinary how many Euphorbia there are and how much they differ from each other.  The only way to know they are related is by the  flowers.
Here is a photo of the tiny ground cover.  The leaves are very small  in dry weather.  I added my finger tip for scale.

It was only recently that I found out that this old favorite ground cover  was in fact an Euphorbia!

Never forget that the milky sap or latex of  the Euphorbia plant is highly toxic.  Especially in the eyes.  There is one very fierce large tree size Euphorbia in the northern parts of South Africa where it is dangerous  in habitat where those large plants grow to walk downwind when they are in bloom.  Your eyes will start burning and you better cover the eyes and nose with a  piece of  cloth quickly.
Surprisingly the bees and butterflies love the flowers !
   

There are animals - even domestic cattle - that eat some of the Euphorbia species.  This is life saving for the animals in Namaqualand and the Karoo.
I would like an assortment Euphorbia  between the aloe 
plants but most of the pretty or odd ones are rather difficult plants out of their habitat.

Aloe arborescens in habitat.

Aloe arborescens  has a very wide 

distribution from the eastern side of 

the Cape peninsula up through the

 eastern regions of Mozambique, 

Zimbabwe and Malawi.

These photos were taken in the 

Tradouw Pass of the Small Karoo.

This excursion into the small Karoo is once more into the drier parts of the country to see some succulents. We were heading for Montagu.
The Klein Karoo will make the heart skip a beat of any person who loves succulent plants.
Kogmanspass is just a short tunnel through the mountain. Remarkable as it was built by hand 1876 - 1878

Geological history Kogmanskloof passes through folded layers of the table mountain sandstone in the Langeberge mountains. Rivers deposited the sediment of which these rock were formed along a coastline some 400 to 450 million years ago. Then about 280 million years ago compression forces in the earth's crust began folding the beds for the next 60 million years. Upon this followed forces which formed large crustal fractures roughly parallel to the present coastline. One of the largest of these, the Worcester Fault passes near the southern entrance to the kloof and displaced beds to the south of it downward by several kilometers. Kogmanskloof is but one of several deep gorges carved through the tough sandstone of the table mountain sandstone by the erosive action of swift flowing rivers for millions of years.



The view immediately out of the tunnel into the Kogmanskloof gorge.
It was a lovely winter day. This very hot region is greener in winter than in summer. As on most of our winter trips, the misty weather was not very good for photos but very much better than the summer heat for walking and climbing.

Rudi loves the climbing.  As geologist he is used to climb over rocks just to see what is on the other side of the rock.

photo below:-
The aloes on the slopes are Aloe comptonii.


The very short capitated racemes of Aloe comptonii The leaves are broad and short with blunt teeth.