Grasses Weekend 17 – 19th February 2023 Kgaswane

We were supposed to go to Borakalalo for the module on grasses, but due the heavy rain and the chance of flooding at our usual campsite, our weekend was moved to Kgaswane.

Kgaswane – A hidden gem

We arrived on Friday afternoon to a beautiful destination. Kgaswane nature reserve is truly a hidden gem.  The rain had subsided, and we quickly set up camp.  A few people got a bit lost trying to find us and as there was no signal, we couldn’t send a pin of where we were.  As a result, some people arrived in the rain.  Everybody jumped in to assist and get these tents up in the rain so that they had a place to sleep, excellent teamwork!

We wrote our Ecology and Taxonomy test a bit late due to the late arrivals and then went off to have some dinner and get some sleep.

On Saturday morning, our grass expert, Hennie de Beer, took us  through the makeup and importance of grasses, together with the details on how to identify different species, using their inflorescence and other features. Then we were off to collect our grass samples. We had to identify our samples and make a list of these samples.

Albert from the Grasslands Team with his hands full
Now that’s a fire in the rain

Saturday night we had our usual braai and campfire, but it wasn’t long before we disappeared to have a hot shower and get some sleep as it had been a long day.

Sunday morning, we were up bright and early!  Peter then gave us the task of finding between 15 to 20 grasses in their various inflorescence groups.  This was achieved quite easily as we had collected enough grass samples the day before, and could categorise them in the correct groups.  We were fortunate enough to find a hybrid too.

Are you 100% sure that’s a grass?

When we worked through our list, we were lucky to have Natalie present to help us pronounce the scientific names as we all realized that this was our first exposure to actually pronouncing these names.

Interestingly the consolidated grasses list for the weekend yielded a number of grass species that had not previously been seen at Borakalalo, including the hybrid identified by Hennie as Eragrostis chloromelas x E. curvula.

ED Note: Thanks to student John for taking the time to put together the grasses feedback.