FEATURING - Mountain Flowers: A Field Guide to the Flora of the Drakensberg and Lesotho by Elsa Pooley.

The Special Collections Book of the Week this week is:

Mountain Flowers: A Field Guide to the Flora of the Drakensberg and Lesotho by Elsa Pooley.

This book provides a guide to the flora of the highest mountain region of southern Africa, the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg and Lesotho. It is forbidding, awe-inspiring territory caught amongst the mists and clouds of basalt peaks where waterfalls turn to columns of ice in winter. Long familiar to herdsmen and mountaineers, the area is largely inaccessible and still considered terra incognita by botanists. The plants may differ with every fold of the mountains, with every change in altitude, aspect, drainage and rock type, from one valley or peak to the next, clinging to cracks in rock faces, taking hold in basalt gravels or floating in shallow rock pools on the summit.

The dramatic broken landscape of the escarpment and the harsh climatic conditions on the highlands of Lesotho account for the remarkably diverse plant life with about 2200 species and almost 400 endemics (plants found only in this area and nowhere else in the world). The flora of these high mountains is recognised as one of the world's 'hot spots', a centre of plant diversity of global botanical importance.

Access: https://univofpretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/53281866

This book is available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and is part of our Africana (ZA) Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.