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Batten, Auriol, and Hertha Bokelmann : Wild Flowers of the Eastern Cape Province

(Cape Town: Books of Africa, 1966)

4to; pictorial boards; endpaper map; pp. (xii) + 185, incl. index; full-colour plates. Extremities very slightly rubbed; a few tape marks to endpapers; some moderate foxing to outer leaves and edges. Very good condition. 'There is no part of Southern Africa whose flora more deserves attention and study than that of the Eastern Cape Province. It is in many respects a zone of transition and a meeting ground of many distinct formations. In it we find a variable balance between the winter rainfall areas of the South Western Cape and the summer rainfall areas of the rest of the country. It lies on the main routes of migration of the chief elements of which the South African flora is composed - the southward and westward stream of Central African forest families and the eastward and northward stream of the unique and narrowly localised "Cape" flora. These streams mingle inextricably in the Eastern Cape Province, especially in areas not far removed from the coast, where the rainfall is relatively plentiful and where it occurs, with fluctuations, in both summer and winter seasons. ... As a meeting point of so many floristic elements, and in relation to the very varied rainfall, topography, altitudes, soils and rocks, river valleys and ravines of the area, we find very many distinct types of vegegation, often closely adjacent to one another - high forest, macchia, thorn savannah, grassland, karoid scrub, succulent karoo, swamps - in endless variety.' - From the Foreword

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