Talk on Fire

The Friends of Meadowridge Common are hosting an illustrated talk on Monday 16 November 2015 on Fire and Fynbos with particular reference to the Cape Peninsula fires in March this year. The speaker is Dalton Gibbs, Regional Manager South, Biodiversity Management Branch of the Environmental Resource Management Department of the City of Cape Town. Included in the programme is a short film by Dalton Gibbs. The venue is the Meadowridge Library, Howard Drive, Meadowridge and the time is 7h30. Entrance is free and all welcome. Secure parking and refreshments will be available.
How to get there: http://meadowridgecommon.blogspot.co.za/p/find-us.html.
For more information, please contact Fiona Watson at 021 712 0696 or email the Friends at Meadowridgefriend@gmail.com.

Spring Walk 2015

The Friends of Meadowridge Common Annual Spring Walk on the Common will be held on Saturday 26 September 2015 at 11h30. Meet at the Faraday Way entrance to the Meadowridge Common soccer fields. (Click here for a map.)
  The walk will be led by Stuart Hall, a doctorate student in the Botany Department of Stellenbosch University. Entrance is free, but all donations towards the work of the Friends will be appreciated.
For more information, please contact Fiona Watson at 021 712 0696 or email the Friends at Meadowridgefriend@gmail.com.

For a list of flowers you might see on the spring walk, click here.

A brief history of Meadowridge Common

Bergvliet Farm Homestead

In 1685 Governor Simon van der Stel was granted a farm and grazing rights on a vast estate he called Constantia. After his death in 1712 his property was divided into two portions – Constantia and Bergvliet. In 1769, Petrus Michel Eksteen acquired the farm and built the Bergvliet homestead (above) near Die Oog. The Homestead still stands, and was proclaimed a National Monument in 1989 (now declared a Provincial Heritage Site, Grade II).

William Purcell

  In 1865, the estate was bought by William Fredrick Hertzog. Upon his death in 1902, the estate passed to his sisters Mrs S.W. Purcell and Mrs. A.M. Jeffcoat. Dr W.F. Purcell, son of the former, managed the estate on behalf of his mother and aunt between 1902 and 1919, during which period he began to survey the flora of Bergvliet. Purcell recorded and collected 595 plant species in the greater area of the Bergvliet Farm. His specimens formed the core of the South African Museum's herbarium collection but are now preserved in the Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch. His "list" represents 26.4% of the flora of the Cape Peninsula.

   Following the death of Dr Purcell in 1919, the Reverend W. Jeffcoat assumed stewardship of the farm on behalf of the family. In about 1930, the farm was divided again, the Jeffcoats acquiring Bergvliet, and the upper or northern portion, Kreupelbosch, going to the Purcell descendents. Today, the small natural remnants of the original farm – Die Oog Bird Sanctuary and Meadowridge Common – give us an idea of what the Bergvliet flats must have been like before their development.

   In the 1990s, Fiona Watson and Esme Morris identified several rare and endangered species of plants on Meadowridge Common including the protea Diastella proteoides and the bulb Moraea elsiae. They formed the Friends of Meadowridge Common which comprises dedicated and interested citizens whose common interest is the conservation of this small natural remnant of the original Bergvliet farm.

Extracted from “Bergvliet–Meadowridge–Diep River: Towards a local structure plan. Background report, March 2005”, prepared by Cindy Postlethwayt (Consultant: Strategic & Urban Planning), in association with Sustainable Energy Africa.

To see the chapter on Bergvliet Farmhouse in the book The Great Houses of Constantia by Philippa Dane and Sydney-Anne Wallace (Don Nelson, 1981), click here.  

Birds and beetles

A Hairy Darkling Beetle (Lagria sp.) on the Common. According to the Field guide to Insects of South Africa by Mike Picker, Alan Weaving and Charles Griffiths, they are related to the toktokkes, the Tenebrionidae family.
BELOW: A beautiful Black-headed Heron in a tall pine tree, trying to look like one of the branches.

iSpotting on the Common

We now have a special iSpot Project in which to group all the observations of wildlife and wildflowers on Meadowridge Common. Everything that is posted on iSpot from in and around Meadowridge Common will be added to the project as long as certain tags are put in when the observation is posted. The tags are "Meadowridge Common", "Cape Flats Sand Fynbos remnant" or "Meadowridge indigenous verge flora". To get there, click here.
To learn more about iSpot, click here.

Community Nest Spiders

Adult spiders of most species are solitary and devote the greater part of their lives to catching prey, which can include prospective mates. Should the opportunity arise, they tend to eat mates, brothers, sisters, parents and young, leaving a single, fat, well-fed individual!
  Not all spiders are anti-social, though. Community nest spiders, in the genus Stegodyphus, such as Stegodyphus dumicola, are our only truly social spiders in South Africa. They live in communities, co-operating in prey capture and brood care. When a large insect lands in the web, it invites a heaving scrum of spiders, which eventually overpowers most insects. The nest - consisting of strong, hard, cardboard-like silk - starts off small but is enlarged as the colony grows. It has numerous holes and passageways. Large colonies can cover an entire tree in silk.
  For more info about the fascinating world of spiders, go to www.spiderclub.co.za, or buy Astri and John Leroy's book: Spiders of Southern Africa. To download a poster about the spiders on Meadowridge Common, click here.
Text: Helen Duigan and Astri Leroy

According to Astri Leroy, having this colony on the Common is really lucky as it is difficult to find them anywhere on the Cape Peninsula because Argentine ants are thought to have more or less wiped them out in greater Cape Town.

Photos: Caroline Voget. Meadowridge Common, August 2014.

Banded Garden Orb-web Spider

Banded Garden Orb-web Spider (Argiope trifasciata).

This beautiful spider belongs to the Araneidae family of spiders. Argiope is one of the most familiar genera of orb-web spiders. Being diurnal, garden spiders are colourfully marked, the carapace silver and the legs banded. The aposematic (warning) yellow and black colouration of the abdomen remind birds that they are unpalatable. The Argiope web normally has two zig-zag bands of silk radiating outwards from the hub (centre) to the bottom corners of the web. There may be four of these bands in some species while some juveniles may construct a spiral. These are called “stabilimenta” and serve various functions: they stabilize and strengthen the web, make the web visible perhaps serving as a decoy for birds, or also to reflect ultraviolet light thereby deceiving and attracting insects.
Text: Norman Larsen. 
To download an A3 sized poster on the spiders of Meadowridge Common, click here.

Fire on Table Mountain

Two views of the fire in the Silvermine and Tokai areas of Table Mountain last week. Taken from Meadowridge Common. 

How you can join the CREW and learn more about our rare and endangered plants

The Friends of Meadowridge Common will be holding their AGM for 2015 on Wednesday 25 February in the community hall of the Meadowridge Library (click here for map) at 7h30 pm. The guest speaker will be Ismail Ebrahim of the South African National Biodiversity Institute's Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW) programme. CREW involves volunteers from the public in the monitoring and conservation of South Africa's threatened plants. Anyone can get involved - and CREW provides general plant identification courses as well as field training - so come along to the AGM and find out more. The programme is a partnership between SANBI and the Botanical Society of South Africa (BotSoc). For more information on CREW, click here.

Meadowridge Common has many of its own rare and endangered plants, and Fiona Watson, the Friend's Botanical Officer, will also be giving an update on the flora of Meadowridge Common.

Refreshments will be served and secure parking provided.

Please phone Fiona Watson at 021 712 0696 for more information.   

The Flats Silkypuff, (Diastella proteoides) on Meadowridge Common. This species was probably common and widespread, but it is now restricted to a few remnant patches of lowland fynbos. See Red List.