Vygies: sparklers of the veld

PHOTOS: Lien Botha | WORDS: Dave Pepler, Allan Davies

Good rains across the great, dry spaces of the Northern Cape bring forth vygies in abundance. On a clear, windless day, find a rock where you can look out over the plains and wait for the miracle.

‘Excuse me,’ said the old lady of Soebatsfontein, pulling up her overall to just above her knees. With teeth as strong as a mule’s, she chewed flat a duiker’s tendon and stripped off a bunch of thin fibres. Sticking out her lower lip, she pulled the fibres across it and then rolled the damp threads on her knee with the palm of her hand until they formed a solid strand. ‘This, my child, is what you use to sew a dassie kaross together.’

‘But how do you get the skins soft, tannie?’ She stood up stiffly, went down the steps to the garden gate and bent down, hand on her back, to pick up a dry, twiggy stump. ‘You make a hollow in the sand, line it with a duiker skin and soak the furs in a strong tea of the ash of this soutslaaibos.’

‘Aaah,’ I said, ‘Mesembryanthemum?’

‘No,’ she replied, ‘Soutslaaibos.’

Of all our botanical curiosities, vygies are surely the strangest. From the purple and cream sheets of sour fig, to the celadon of the stone plants, they are all colour and form. The leaves are usually grey-green with a film of wax almost like that of a ripe plum – touch them and the bloom is gone.

Some leaves are round, some cigar-shaped; others, like the beak of a tortoise, smooth or stippled. And then you have the soutslaaibos or Mesembryanthemum: ‘mesembria’ meaning ‘midday’ and ‘anthemon’ meaning ‘flower’. Its leaves are covered in sparkling papillae, hence its species name crystallinum.

Patiently they wait, sometimes for years, for rain. When it does come, you have a vygie year. A week or so after a good downpour, they are the shining bonus. Wait for a calm, cloudless day, find a rock where you can sit and look over the plain. Drab, monochrome – until midday, when suddenly, a miracle occurs. All the flowers open together: before your eyes a vast ripple of colour flows from satin into pure, sparkling tints.

I am always amazed at the cultural riches of the West Coast. The landscape is so ancient, so bare, and yet it holds so many hidden treasures. Drive north from Elands Bay and you can still find stationary horse mills. This is bokkom country, where the local residents collect veldkool and waxberry honey, and they still make sour-fig jam. Have you ever tasted sour-fig jam? Go in search of it, for there are still a few people who make it.

In her book Uit die Waaisand en die Kalkklippe, Betsie Rood explains exactly how to prepare the fruit. She ends: ‘Note that between Christmas and New Year is the best time to make the jam – just when there’s the least time to do it!’

My front stoep faces west and gets as hot as a blast furnace. On each step I have an earthenware pot, each of which contains a vygie, the soil surface covered with coffee-coloured pebbles. Every morning, I sit on the top step and drink coffee while looking at them. They are as still as fossils the whole year long. Then suddenly, overnight, a bud will appear. That day I try to stay home and wait for the sun to strike, because I know the flower will open just for me.

Vygies give you a quiet pleasure. How sweet the old names sound – ghoena, ghôkum, steekvy, kougoed, vingerkanna, brakslaai, asbos, loogslaai, kirriemoer, haasballetjies. Above all, vygies reward you with their gratitude, abundance and light. At midday, in drought and grit, they shine.

Marvellous Mesembs

‘Vygie’ is short and sweet, a drop of honey on the tongue. English has only the Latin mouthful of Mesembryanthemum, usually shortened to mesemb. These wonderful succulents belong to a vast group of plants now included in the botanical family Aizoaceae.

There are 123 genera of mesembs, most of which occur in the southwestern regions of the African continent. They vary enormously, but all possess special characteristics that reveal nature at her most ingenious.

Mesembs include low, twiggy shrubs, lax or tufted ground huggers and thumbnail-size buttons. Leaves may be cylindrical, flat, tongue-shaped, rough, toothed, crystalline, ruffled or smooth and waxy. Sometimes the leaves are almost the entire plant, disguised as stones and invisible in their natural environment except when in flower. These flowering stones, such as Lithops, Fenestraria and Conophytum, are prized by collectors worldwide.

The flowers vary in size and colour, and in the number and width of petals, but they all have two things in common – they are daisy-like, with uniform petals arranged around a central boss of stamens, and they shine with a brilliance unrivalled even in the Cape floral kingdom.

This brilliance is designed to lure insects from afar, but mesembs also use additional strategies to reduce competition with other plants for pollinators. Depending on the species, flowers appear at different times of the year and open at different times of the day, from early morning to early evening.

The seed capsules are marvels of engineering. Botanists have been able to divide the mesembs into six groups according to the structure and intricately varied geometry of their seed capsules.

These have between four and ten seed chambers, which are able to open in response to moisture, release seeds, (which are usually washed out by raindrops) and then close again as they dry out to wait for the next shower – next week or next year. This greatly enhances the chances of successful germination and species survival in arid environments.

Growing Mesembs

• The shrubby mesembs, such as Lampranthus, are what most South Africans think of as ‘vygies’. They grow easily from cuttings or seeds. Cuttings are best taken after fruiting and started in pots in a gravelly, sandy soil mix enriched with compost and bonemeal. The same soil mix is good for planting in the garden.

• Cuttings of the ground-cover mesembs, such as Aptenia and Carpobrotus, may be planted in situ at any time of the year provided they can be watered regularly until well rooted.

• Flowering stones of all kinds are best in pots.

• Plenty of sunlight (particularly in the morning) and good air circulation are important – these are plants of wide open spaces.

• The shrubby and ground-cover mesembs are ideal for arid and waterwise gardens, but are not recommended for regions prone to regular frost.

• No mesemb should be over-fed or over-watered. Most benefit from being kept fairly dry in summer.

• Plant the shrubby mesembs in gravel interspersed with sowings of Namaqualand annuals for a truly brilliant spring display. Add summer or winter blooming aloes for structure and colour throughout the year.

• Many shrubby mesembs run out of steam after two or three years and need to be replaced with fresh plants that are easily grown, once again, from cuttings.